Pubdate: Sun, 17 Sep 2000
Source: Denver Rocky Mountain News (CO)
Copyright: 2000 Denver Publishing Co.
Contact:  400 W. Colfax, Denver, CO 80204
Website: http://www.denver-rmn.com/
Author: Kevin Flynn

MARIJUANA FOR MEDICAL USE HAS STRONG SUPPORT IN POLLS

Medical marijuana is seen either as a compassionate concession to the pain 
of the chronically ill or a stalking horse in the national campaign to 
legalize drugs.

The battleground this year is Colorado, where a multi-million dollar 
national movement to legalize the use of marijuana by people with cancer, 
glaucoma, AIDS or other chronically painful illnesses goes before voters on 
Nov. 7.

It was first proposed for the 1998 ballot but then-Secretary of State Vikki 
Buckley kicked it off in an administrative decision that was later 
overturned. Polls shows the constitutional amendment would pass by a 
healthy majority if the election were today.

Last week, a Denver Rocky Mountain News-News4 poll showed the medical 
marijuana initiative supported by 71 percent of registered voters, and 
opposed by 23 percent. On the ballot, it is labeled Amendment 20.

Supporters say the therapeutic effect of marijuana on pain and nausea will 
help patients put on weight and take the edge off chronic pain. To withhold 
this option for lessening their suffering is a cruel side effect of a 
futile war on drugs, they argue.

Opponents call it "medicine by popular vote."

Every other prescribed drug must be tested in scientifically rigorous 
trials to ensure that it is safe and effective before it can be sold to the 
public. But marijuana in smoked form has never been shown in controlled 
scientific studies to be a safe or effective medicine.

If what patients want is the soothing effects of pot on their nausea, 
opponents say, then they can take Marinol, a safer and more stable medicine 
containing the active ingredient in marijuana that promotes appetite.

Marinol is the brand name for the synthetic form of tetrahydrocannabinol or 
THC, the principal active ingredient in marijuana. It has been available 
since its approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1985.

Other more effective and less risky medicines than Marinol also are being 
developed.

The involvement of medical marijuana backers in other attempts to 
decriminalize drug use has opponents saying this initiative is a disguised 
effort to enact more permissive drug laws.

But those backing the measure insist it isn't a back-door first step to 
legalizing other drugs for the general population. Marinol, they counter, 
has serious side effects.

And forcing people to use Marinol rather than pot, they say, is a way of 
keeping people dependent on the pharmaceutical industry rather than being 
responsible for themselves.

"The amendment was written to limit the use of marijuana to the people who 
really need it medically," said Julie Roche, a spokeswoman for the group 
supporting the amendment, Coloradans for Medical Rights 2000.

"We never intended to go any further than to allow patients who were 
possessing and using marijuana to do so legally," said Gina Pesulima, 
spokeswoman for Americans for Medical Rights in Santa Monica, Calif.

The group is bankrolling the Colorado initiative, as it has in other 
states. It in turn is backed primarily by three wealthy businessmen who are 
sometimes called the "Daddy Warbucks" of the movement to end the war on drugs.

They are financier and philanthropist George Soros of New York, Progressive 
Auto Insurance head Peter B. Lewis of Cleveland, and John Sperling, founder 
of the University of Phoenix program. They are continuing the work of a 
group of wealthy individuals who funded passage of the California medical 
marijuana measure in 1996.

Soros has committed $15 million over a five-year period for projects that 
explore alternatives to existing drug policies.

Lewis, 66, a trustee of Princeton University and director of the board of 
the Guggenheim museums, was arrested in New Zealand in January and charged 
with possession of less than four ounces total of marijuana and hashish. He 
was entering the country to visit a daughter and to watch the America's Cup 
regatta.

Lewis made a large donation to a drug treatment center in Auckland and the 
charges were dropped the next day.

Narrowly written or not, the medical marijuana initiative is part of a 
larger agenda of drug law reform. Soros, Lewis and Sperling also bankroll 
the Campaign for New Drug Policies.

That group this year began using state initiatives to try to decriminalize 
nonviolent drug offenses and change the current practice that allows the 
seizure of drug users' property.

Sperling spearheaded the 1996 vote in Arizona that offered treatment 
instead of jail to some drug users. With his two compatriots, they poured 
$1.2 million into that campaign.

The Drug Reform Coordination Network of Washington, D.C., backs their efforts.

"The initiative process has become an effective tool for drug policy 
reform, as evidenced by the medical marijuana initiative victories across 
the country in 1996, 1998 and most recently in Maine in 1999," the group 
wrote in a report earlier this year.

The Colorado initiative would allow specific patients to own and grow small 
amounts of marijuana. They could have six plants, with no more than three 
in flower at a time.

If they are not growing it themselves, patients can have up to two ounces 
at a time. Anyone found to have more than that must prove the extra amount 
is medically necessary.

To qualify for use, the patient must obtain a doctor's finding that he or 
she might benefit from the use of marijuana. A state registry would be 
created to qualify people for medical marijuana. Cards would be issued to 
patients, who can show them to police if they are stopped for possession.

The amendment also protects one primary caregiver of the patient from 
prosecution for marijuana possession. A primary caregiver must be at least 
18 years old to qualify.

The amendment also protects doctors who advise patients to use marijuana. 
To avoid running afoul of federal regulations, the law doesn't require 
doctors to prescribe marijuana. They merely must discuss the risks and 
benefits of marijuana with a patient and find that marijuana might benefit 
that patient.

The amendment prohibits patients from using marijuana in public or in the 
workplace.

The Colorado initiative, similar to one passed in Oregon in 1998, is 
narrowly drawn to allow marijuana use only by a limited class of people, 
namely those suffering from the effects of glaucoma, cancer, AIDS and other 
chronic debilitating conditions, like epilepsy or multiple sclerosis.

While marijuana smoking helps ease the pain and nausea of treatments for 
cancer and AIDS, and the effects of glaucoma and multiple sclerosis, 
smoking marijuana is nevertheless opposed by many advocacy groups for 
sufferers of those diseases.

The use of smoked marijuana as medicine is opposed by the American Medical 
Association, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, The American Cancer 
Society, the American Glaucoma Society and the American Academy of 
Ophthalmology.

Dr. Joel Karlin, a Lakewood physician active in the opposition group 
Coloradans Against Legalizing Marijuana, says it is safer and more 
effective for patients to get on a regulated regimen of Marinol than to 
rely on the variable quality of the many supplies of marijuana available 
illegally on the streets.

"I know a number of oncologists (cancer physicians) who have said that 
Marinol is much more effective for the purposes patients want," Karlin 
said. "Smoked marijuana has abrupt action but it's gone in four hours. But 
the duration of Marinol is eight to 12 hours, and they take it twice a day."

The U.S. Justice Department, which has battled the implementation of 
medical marijuana initiatives in California and elsewhere, takes the 
position that it is a harmful drug with more bad side-effects than 
medicinal benefits.

The harmful consequences of smoking marijuana, the department says, include 
cancer, addiction, coordination and perception impairment, various mental 
disorders such as depression, hostility and increased aggressiveness, 
general apathy and memory loss.

Studies show that HIV-positive marijuana smokers progress to full-blown 
AIDS twice as fast as nonsmokers. They also have a higher rate of bacterial 
pneumonia, according to the Justice Department.

Another problem opponents see is that while the initiative makes it legal 
for certain patients to possess and use marijuana, it would still be 
illegal for other people to sell or provide it to them.

In other words, patients could have their pot, but they couldn't get it 
legally. Backers say they purposely left out of the amendment any legal 
means for patients to obtain marijuana, preferring to go one step at a time.

In California, where a medical marijuana proposition passed in 1996, there 
still is no legal way to obtain the substance. The U.S. Supreme Court 
recently barred the Oakland, Calif., Cannabis Buyers Cooperative from 
distributing marijuana to those claiming a medical need.

Instead, Roche said, the Colorado initiative makes it an affirmative 
defense against a marijuana charge if the patient in possession has a 
doctor's recommendation and gets onto a to-be-established state registry of 
patients.

Pesulima said finding a way to legally distribute marijuana to patients 
will come later.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart