Pubdate: Tue, 05 Nov 2002
Source: Gambit Weekly (LA)
Copyright: 2002, Gambit Communications, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/current/gw_index.html
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2406
Author: Eileen Loh Harrist

THE BEST MEDICINE?

In Louisiana, qualified patients are supposed to be able to legally use 
pot. But so far, the state's medical marijuana laws are nothing but smoke.

Until last August, Wesley Sarradet resided quietly in his childhood home in 
the West Baton Rouge Parish community of Brusly, with his 92-year-old 
grandmother, two guns and a closet full of pot.

Sarradet has lived in the three-bedroom home for 42 years. Born with 
spastic cerebral palsy, he receives a modest income from Social Security. 
The guns were for security. The marijuana plants provided a source of 
relief, he says, from uncontrollable muscle spasms that plague him daily 
and keep him awake at night.

The quiet existence and the security erupted last summer. Sarradet says 
narcotics agents busted down his kitchen door with a battering ram in the 
middle of the night. "They were local police officers working with the 
narcotics task force and they had known me all their lives," Sarradet says, 
his voice rising in anger. "I went to high school with one of them. Three 
of the officers in my home had known me my entire life. They called me by 
my name. They had shattered the back door; glass everywhere. My grandmother 
was in the next room, the living room, in her hospital bed.

"They said they had a search warrant and I was not under arrest, and to 
give them any marijuana that I had in the home and they would write me a 
misdemeanor summons."

Sarradet gave them some loose pot, and the officers countered that there 
had to be more in the house. "They searched my bank records, they searched 
through my drawers. They didn't find any other drugs; no cash money, 
nothing like that." The police took two guns that Sarradet says he 
purchased legally, and they threatened to seize a stack of adult magazines 
to check them for child pornography, Sarradet says.

"They said, where did I get my marijuana? They said, 'We can make this all 
go away' if I tell them -- if I drop names. I got the key and opened my 
closet where I had my hydroponics operation going, and that made them 
extremely happy. That's where I was getting my marijuana from -- from my 
own closet, for my own personal use. There were 14 plants in there, all 
different sizes, only three of which were budding.

"They told me to get dressed ... they were bringing me in. I was charged 
with two drug felonies and a misdemeanor; paraphernalia was the 
misdemeanor. I was charged with possession with intent to distribute, and 
charged with cultivation. My bond was $75,000."

Agents at the River West Narcotics Task Force who arrested Sarradet can 
remember his case more than a year later. Task force director Maj. Jerome 
Fontenot scoffs at Sarradet's claim that he had grown the plants solely for 
personal use, while assistant director James "Richie" Johnson, one of the 
arresting officers who knew Sarradet, concedes that Sarradet probably did 
have medical problems. But Johnson says he has a duty to uphold the law, 
which makes marijuana illegal no matter what.

The officers told Sarradet they obtained a search warrant based on the 
testimony of a "confidential informant" who had been in Sarradet's house 
within 24 hours of the raid, and who told them Sarradet was a pot supplier. 
Sarradet believes the informant was an acquaintance of his, a man in jail 
at the time of the raid, and who gave the officers Sarradet's name in 
exchange for a reduced sentence. "A jailhouse snitch looking to get out of 
trouble," Sarradet calls him.

Sarradet says he had grown his own pot for years. He found it cheaper, more 
effective and less overwhelming than prescribed medications, many of which 
are addictive and have overwhelming side effects. These drugs include 
hydrocodone (Vicodin) and morphine patches for pain, and methocarbamol for 
spasms, alprazolam (Xanax) for anxiety and depression. "I had been using 
the marijuana therapeutically for a number of years," Sarradet says. "I 
have spastic cerebral palsy which is severe in my lower limbs and which 
makes the muscles in my whole body real tense. Cerebral palsy is an 
electrical impulse from the brain that fires the muscles, and it's almost 
being fired constantly. Marijuana helps me to relax at night, and helps me 
to sleep at night."

Sarradet was willing to go to trial, to get relatives to testify that no 
one outside the family had visited the home just prior to the raid, to lay 
out his medical history. "I don't think a jury would have convicted me if I 
would have been allowed to use my medical records in evidence," Sarradet 
says, "but I didn't know if the judge would have allowed me to use my 
medical records, or even mention the words 'medical marijuana.'"

So he decided to accept a plea bargain to stay out of jail -- a five-year 
probation and random drug tests in exchange for a second-offense felony 
possession charge, though it was his first-ever drug bust. "My lawyer told 
me that was a best-interest plea and that's what I took -- to guarantee no 
jail time.

"I've lost my rights to possess my handguns. I can't defend my home and 
there are two disabled people living in this house," Sarradet says. "I've 
lost my right to vote and I believe my rights to privacy were violated 
through the search warrant, being that it was bogus. So that's three rights 
I believe were violated."

He's getting drug tested, and if he's caught with marijuana in his system 
that's a third offense and a guaranteed prison stay. Now Sarradet says he 
can't sleep; he's lost weight, and he says the drugs he takes legally for 
pain and seizure control have robbed him of his appetite and turned him 
into a zombie. "I pretty much was really shafted every which way," he says.

The kicker is that in Louisiana, people like Sarradet are supposed to be 
able to legally obtain medical marijuana.

According to state law, marijuana is legal for patients who qualify to use 
it. The problem is that the law -- which passed through the state 
legislature in three incarnations -- never took effect, so medical 
marijuana remains in a curious legal limbo here.

In 1978, then-Gov. Edwin Edwards signed a bill cleared by the House and 
Senate to let doctors prescribe marijuana for glaucoma, cancer and 
paralysis patients. The new law called for the creation of a Marijuana 
Prescription Review Board to determine who would be able to obtain legal 
marijuana.

That board never got off the ground. Louisiana's medical-marijuana law 
lingered until 1981, when an amended version of the 1978 bill was 
introduced. This one, too, authorized doctors to prescribe marijuana; it 
also cleared the House and Senate and was also signed into law, this time 
by then-Gov. David Treen. And like its predecessor, it never saw the light 
of day. In 1989, the Marijuana Prescription Review Board was deemed an 
inactive commission and dissolved.

In 1991, another lawmaker took a stab at reviving Louisiana's 
medical-marijuana law. Rep. Clark Gaudin, R-Baton Rouge, introduced the 
bill after a young man rolled into Gaudin's office in his wheelchair to 
talk to the lawmaker about his reliance on pot.

"He would have some type of convulsions from time to time, and he would 
shake like he had 7,500 volts running in his body," recalls Gaudin, now an 
attorney in private practice. "He said [marijuana] was the only thing that 
gave him any kind of relief."

Gaudin, a conservative Republican, says the medical-marijuana issue 
transcended party lines. "A lot of my colleagues were a little surprised 
that I would be the author of the bill," he says. "But I agents, are not 
what you want; it's the THC ... but if you don't smoke it, that takes away 
from the recreational benefit that people want. And how many people are 
claiming medical need when they are really looking for use recreationally?"

King cautions that no legal body should be casual about allowing medical 
marijuana. "There's a lot of legal drugs making their way onto the black 
market," he warns. "If [legalization] occurs, there needs to be a clear 
indication that marijuana is a chemical substance, and a drug that has an 
effect like other drugs. And if it's proven to have a beneficial effect -- 
that is, if it's proven -- then, like other drugs, there may be benefits 
from using the marijuana."

The crux of the medical marijuana argument rests in the question of whether 
pot is as effective, or more so, than other medications in easing such 
ailments as nausea, appetite loss and its subsequent "wasting" effect, 
muscle spasms, and intraocular pressure.

Most of the evidence that supports marijuana as a therapeutic substance is 
anecdotal, dependent upon the claims of patients rather than research 
studies. "Unfortunately, we don't have any good clinical trials that really 
have looked at marijuana in the same sort of systematic fashion that we 
have for many of the other medications that we use," says Dr. John Cole, an 
oncologist at the Ochsner Cancer Institute.

"Although the perception is that it's not as good as some of our other 
medications for nausea, in terms of being able to prove that, we really 
don't have these comparative trials. So from a purely scientific 
standpoint, we can't say for sure whether marijuana is as good as the other 
medications."

NORML spokesman Paul Armenthano blames the federal government for the lack 
of research, saying it keeps a tight rein on the pot legally grown on the 
federal farm in Oxford, Miss. Besides, he says, the quality of marijuana 
cultivated there is so poor that it would skew any legitimate studies meant 
to test the herb's effectiveness.

"The marijuana grown at the University of Mississippi at Oxford is doled 
out for NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse) research purposes," 
Armenthano says. "The overwhelming majority of research, not surprisingly, 
is research that is trying to find the negative ramifications of marijuana."

He also points out that the pharmaceutical industry -- consistently among 
the nation's top donors to political campaigns -- vehemently oppose the 
legal sanction of any medication that patients can grow for themselves.

The scarcity of clinical studies means that scientists don't really know 
why marijuana seems to work so well for some patients, says Jean Redmann, 
the Education Director for the NO/AIDS Task Force. "It could be the alchemy 
of so many things that are in the plant -- that's a theory. No one has done 
much scientific research on why it works; it's very hard to do scientific 
research on marijuana right now," she says.

"I think most of us [at NO/AIDS] -- I'm going out on a limb here -- I think 
most of us would be OK with using marijuana to relieve symptoms if it were 
legally prescribed," she says. "It has some evidence of medical efficacy."

Redmann recalls the issue of medical marijuana coming up during a doctor's 
visit with her mother, years ago. "My mother's oncologist told her that 
'some people say marijuana helps alleviate the symptoms.' And he gave me 
this look, as if to say 'OK, you're the daughter living in New York ... .'"

Cole cites a survey taken in 1991 by the American Society of Clinical 
Oncology, who polled its members to find if any had suggested that their 
patients try pot. "About 44 percent said they had recommended marijuana to 
at least one person. That was pretty interesting. But at that time, we were 
still struggling quite a bit with controlling the nausea and the vomiting 
associated with chemotherapy. Our expertise has improved quite a bit since 
then, primarily with the development of anti-nausea medications."

One company, Unimed Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Georgia, patented a synthetic 
form of the extract THC. The drug, known as Marinol, is prescribed to 
cancer and AIDS patients to stimulate appetite and combat nausea, though 
patients have reported it's not as fast-acting or as effective as marijuana 
in smoked form, and doesn't work well for those who have trouble 
swallowing. Cole agrees that Marinol is "not a real effective anti-nausea 
medication," and he generally prescribes other drugs.

An Oxford, Miss. company has developed a medication that contains THC 
extracted from marijuana; one dose equals about a fifth of the THC normally 
found in a marijuana cigarette, says its manufacturer, ElSohly 
Laboratories. The drug is expected to be legal in the United States in 
about three years, and like Marinol is touted as having the therapeutic 
effects of marijuana without the high. The company will market its THC 
extract in suppository form, which Cole admits is "aesthetically not 
pleasing ... but a patient having a difficult time swallowing would need an 
alternative route of medication."

Cole acknowledges smoking is one such alternate route. He does not advise 
his patients to try marijuana, in part due to the risk of being arrested 
for purchasing an illegal drug. But Cole doesn't object when patients tell 
him they're already smoking pot, and says he'd probably prescribe it if he 
could.

"I think there would be a subgroup of patients who probably would benefit 
from that," the oncologist says. "My primary goal is to get my patients 
through their treatment as successfully as possible ... and occasionally we 
do have patients who have problems with nausea, in spite of everything we 
have. So the more we have to work with, the better."

Wesley Sarradet is another person who has been avidly following 
medical-marijuana stories. He's planning to one day move to a state that 
has decriminalized marijuana for medical use. "But I'm the primary 
caregiver for my grandmother, so seven nights a week I have to stay here, 
and I'm not in a position where I can leave. But when I am in the position 
where I can leave, I will leave immediately."

Sarradet says that life since the August 2001 raid has been a grim march of 
days in which he's either wracked with pain or too drugged on strong legal 
painkillers to function. "If I want to stay in bed, I can take the 
medication. If I want to have a normal-functioning life where I can do 
stuff for myself, I can't take that medicine."

His doctor, he claims, expressed sympathy that he had to quit using 
marijuana. "My doctor told me my condition is only going to get worse as I 
get older," Sarradet says.

"He said if he would have been able to write me a prescription, he would 
have done it. He said anything to help me cope with my condition should be 
available to me."
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