cannabisnews.com: Patients Heatedly Defend Smoking Weed Patients Heatedly Defend Smoking Weed Posted by FoM on February 25, 2001 at 07:15:19 PT By Tom Mashberg Source: Boston Herald She works nights as a nurse in a cancer ward outside Boston, tending to the sick and the dying. Not a day passes when she isn't asked the same raspy-voiced question: ``How can I get some marijuana?''Like many caregivers across the state, she guides the supplicant to someone who can help - a hospital staffer with a stash, perhaps, or another patient on chemotherapy. Pot, she is convinced, eases the suffering and indignity of cancer.``You can really see the difference,'' she said, discussing only on condition of anonymity the way medicinal marijuana circulates in cancer centers. ``Patients are more interested in food. They do not look so physically wasted. They engage more with their families.''As this nurse and others make clear, while the law may deride it, the use of medicinal marijuana is commonplace in Massachusetts.Some people, like Robert Angelesco, 50, of Revere, started smoking after contracting Hodgkin's disease in 1995. For him, as for other cancer patients, pot mitigated the wretched nausea and wooziness of his drug treatments. Others, like Marcy Duda, 39, of Ware, turned to pot after suffering a series of near-fatal aneurysms. A few puffs on a joint, she said, staved off the debilitating migraines that would otherwise knock her out for days at a time. ``Before marijuana, I was a legal-substance abuser,'' said Duda, an activist who wears a headband made of silk cannabis leaves and who makes speeches, leads petition drives and writes to legislators seeking legalization of medicinal pot. ``Demerol, Percocet, Valium, this stuff was prescribed to me. It left me sick and useless.``With pot,'' she said, ``I smoked a little and 20 minutes later I was functional for the rest of the day.''And then there's ``C.J.,'' a father from the southwestern part of the state who was on federal disability for years for bipolar disorder and other psychological problems before turning to medicinal pot. ``I'm finally off (disability) and working now,'' said C.J., who asked that his name be withheld but agreed to be photographed. ``It's ironic. Pot has made me a taxpayer again.''Duda, Angelesco and C.J. all say they have tried Marinol, a legal prescription drug in pill form that contains a synthesized version of the active ingredient in marijuana.At $10 a pill, they say, it is not only costly but nearly impossible for nauseated chemotherapy sufferers to swallow. The effect in pill form, they add, is slower and less soothing than that of smoke.``Marinol has never worked on anyone,'' said Robert, a 45-year-old Web designer and distance cyclist from the North Shore who smokes marijuana to alleviate the asthma he developed after experiencing brain and kidney tumors.``The docs put me on it, they put me on powerful steroids and amphetamines,'' he said. ``None of it worked. I was desperate. A friend convinced me to try a little pot, and I couldn't believe the result.''Robert, a conservative whose neighbors include police officers and state troopers, said his wife was so skeptical and fearful, she made him stop using the herb. A week later, he said, his asthma had returned in earnest and he again lost whole days to illness.``Of course I asked myself, `How can smoking be any good for your lungs?' '' he said. ``It doesn't make sense. My daughter is very antidrug. She was hypercritical. So I researched it. Sure enough, this is a very well documented phenomenon among people with asthma.``I don't smoke at work or at home,'' he said. ``I'm a responsible adult with serious clients. I smoke maybe the equivalent of a joint a week. This drug should be legal. I'm worried all the time about arrest. I can't believe my government has put me in this position.''Source: Boston Herald (MA) Author: Tom Mashberg Published: Sunday, February 25, 2001Copyright: 2001 The Boston Herald, Inc. Address: One Herald Square, Boston, MA 02106-2096 Website: http://www.bostonherald.com/ Contact: letterstoeditor bostonherald.com Related Article:Mass. Law for Medicinal Use Still in Limbohttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread8792.shtmlCannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml END SNIP --> Snipped Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #2 posted by jimmyJOEbob on June 09, 2001 at 00:34:19 PT: SMOKE POT: Come rejoice your freedom!!!!........ JULY 4TH WASHINGTON DC 31ST ANNAUAL SMOKEOUTLAFET PARK NEAR LINCON MEMORIAL [ Post Comment ] Comment #1 posted by kaptinemo on February 25, 2001 at 08:01:12 PT: Fear, fear, and more fear Again and again and again, that's what it always comes down to. Fear.These MMJ patients are justifiably afraid that if they speak up, their already tenuous grasp on any quality of life will be snatched away by the antis. They are afraid that (even though I seriously doubt any of them knew of him) they will wind up in exactly the same way that Peter McWilliams did. To languish in the clutches of the (in)Justice system, which demands that they suffer and die for it's Draconian principles of protecting the children.(And what, pray tell, of the children in cancer wards, undergoing unspeakable pain and anguish, which could be alleviated with cannabis? I wish I could drag Joyce Nalepka and all her ilk by the scruff of their oh-so-righteous necks and take them to the office of the oncologist of that elderly woman I cared for. I'd like to have her tell those bald-headed, emaciated children with the look of the Grim Reaper reflected in their eyes how they're doing it "all for the chil-drun", to save them from the deadly threat of mary-joo-wanna addiction.) So long as the antis can be allowed to escape facing the horrors they have perpetrated in the name of their unholy crusade, they will continue to sound like fonts of moral wisdom. But put just one MMJ user in front of them, and have them tell their story, and the watch the antis become frantic in their haste to find an exit.The antis would prefer that the truth about MMJ stay safely dead...as well as those who have benefitted from it...or those who could. That's the real anti agenda vis-a-vis MMJ patients. [ Post Comment ] Post Comment Name: Optional Password: E-Mail: Subject: Comment: [Please refrain from using profanity in your message] Link URL: Link Title: