Pubdate: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 Source: Anderson Valley Advertiser (CA) Column: Cannabinotes Copyright: 2005 Anderson Valley Advertiser Contact: http://www.theava.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2667 Author: Fred Gardner Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Leveque (Dr. Phil Leveque) WOULDA COULDA SHOULDA 1. Implications of the Vioxx Verdict It took a Texas jury only a day and a half to decide to sock it to Merck on behalf of Carol Ernst, a widow whose 59-year-old Vioxx-taking husband died of a heart attack in 2001. Texas has a protect-the-corporations cap, so the $253 million total award will be reduced to $26 million, which will then be appealed. Merck shares have fallen 10% on news of the verdict. Merck had chosen the venue, deep in the heart of Tom Delay country, and the case, in which the autopsy listed the cause of death as irregular heartbeat. (Clinical trials had linked Vioxx to heart attacks, strokes and blood clots; irregular heartbeat can have other origins.) The jury saw right through Merck's lies. They set punitive damages at $229 million -the exact amount Merck execs calculated they'd save by delaying for a few months a warning on the Vioxx label about cardiovascular risks. Merck killed 19 times as many Americans with their Vioxx than the 9/11 hijackers did with their planes. (David Graham, MD, of the FDA, projected 55,000 deaths and 85,000 disabling injuries.) And the harm was inflicted intentionally! Early clinical trials had alerted Merck executives to the fact that Vioxx caused coronary damage. Their response was to exclude from future trials anyone with a history of heart trouble. Once Vioxx was on the market, Merck suppressed indications that it was causing strokes and heart attacks at twice the normal rate in people who used it for 18 months or more. The jurors who found for Carol Ernst against Merck were speaking for the American people, who have become totally hip to the pharmaceutical companies in recent years. "Respect us, that's the message," a juror Derrick Chizer, told the media. "Respect us." Forewoman Marsha Robbins said, "We expect accountability, we expect them to be open with us, we expect them to be honest with us." Merck's response, according to the Wall St. Journal: "The board is mulling whether to put Vioxx back on the market partly to blunt plaintiff attorneys' ammunition." Marijuana is literally and figuratively an alternative to Vioxx. The medical marijuana movement has contributed -and could contribute much more-to exposing and discrediting the pharmaceutical industry. Doctors in the Society of Cannabis Clinicians report that a large percentage of their patients define their progress in terms of which pharmaceutical drugs they can do without (avoiding adverse side effects and, often, great expense). "How's your back pain?" the doctor will ask. "I'm getting away with half as many Vicodin," the patient will respond. Dennis Peron's famous line -"In a country where they give Prozac to shy teenagers, all marijuana use is medical"- was not some sophistry trick to achieve legalization, it was a putdown of the pharmaceutical industry and a challenge to the medical establishment and to a rightwing culture that "medicalizes" problems that are basically economic. Dennis had interviewed thousands of people seeking to use marijuana for medical reasons, and determined that they all had rationales at least as compelling as the rationale for being treated with a Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. For his brilliant and forward-moving generalization, Dennis took an endless ration of shit. To this day, in the high-level chatrooms, reform honchos bemoan Dennis's line (truncating it, although they know better, to "all use is medical"). If the reform leaders had not taken offense at Dennis's line in '96, if they had drawn him out instead of trying to silence him, if they had acted on the implications of his Prozac riff and publicized marijuana as a safe alternative to pharmaceuticals with their damaging (unto death) side-effects, maybe the public in 2005 would be giving the medical marijuana movement some credit for exposing Merck et al as greed-driven pushers of deadly products. And maybe the public would not be surprised by footage of seemingly able-bodied young men emerging from cannabis dispensaries... But the less-radical leaders acted as if Dennis was a loose cannon, a "character" who had outworn his usefulness. The crucial thing to remember about Ethan Nadelmann and Bill Zimmerman, the "campaign professional" installed to replace Dennis, is that they would have preferred an initiative resembling the Vasconcellos bill of '94 and '95 which limited to four the conditions for which doctors could authorize marijuana use. They assumed it would have been an easier sell. The pros from Dover glommed on to Prop 215 too late to veto "...any other condition for which marijuana provides relief;" but they kept such wording out of the initiatives they wrote and promoted in other states. Dennis's instinct was to break out of the single-issue trap. He had said all along he wanted Prop 215 to be a step towards something bigger -MUCH bigger than the "legalization" goal that the Drug Warriors accuse the medical-marijuana advocates of pursuing. "This isn't about marijuana, this is about America, it's about how we treat each other as people," he kept saying during the Prop 215 campaign. He said that whatever we achieved would be the legacy of all his friends who had died in the epidemic. After 215 passed he was in a double bind. He had built the prototype "buy-low, sell-high" cannabis club model, but he didn't see how that model could lead to social change. 2. Dispensaries Get P.R. Conscious The following email was sent on behalf of the Drug Policy Alliance by Dale Gieringer of California NORML: SUPPORT NEEDED FOR SF MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARIES The SF Board of Supervisors is being deluged with complaints against MMJ dispensaries through an organized campaign led by neighborhood activists. Their aim is to pressure the Board to push a tough anti-dispensary ordinance. In order to resist this effort, we need allies from outside the MJ community who are willing to speak up in favor of the clubs. It would be particularly helpful to enlist supportive businesses, neighborhood groups and health care professionals. Please let us know if you are aware of any 'outside' supporters of dispensaries from S.F. who would be willing to voice their support. We are aiming to organize a campaign in favor of the dispensaries. Please circulate among friends in the SF area. This effort would not be necessary now if the clubs had been relating differently to their customers (aka "the patients") all along. I don't mean that they should have been "providing social services" (the phrase makes my skin crawl) which some are now trying to do. I mean treating people as comrades in a political/educational struggle for the consciousness of America. At Dennis's club the primary transaction was political/educational. In the early-to-mid-1990s seven thousand people got cards there at a time when getting one was a subversive act in and of itself. Then the place became Prop 215 headquarters. Even DP's misbegotten run for governor in '97 meant that 1444 Market was a political beehive. You couldn't get upstairs without passing the literature/petition counter on the mezzanine. What I'm really talking about, though, is unquantifiable -a vibe, a mood in the air. At 1444 Market the nature of the dialogue between staff and patrons and between patrons and patrons usually touched on our new collective discovery: marijuana has beneficial medical effects for an amazing range of conditions! And I bet a proper clinical trial would reveal that political action has antidepressant and other beneficial health effects.) At very few of the clubs today is politics in the air. The transactions at the counter are overwhelmingly commercial. You might say Well, the times are different, the freshness of our discovery is gone. It isn't. Tashkin's cancer study, the role of CBD, the marketing of Sativex, the rescheduling fight, the busts, all the news that interests you and me would interest a significant fraction of cannabis dispensary patrons if it was laid on them in the right way. That's the role that I thought a paper could play. I told Ethan Nadelmann in December '96 as he started tritzing off to the other states (anointed by the NYT as our leader) that we needed a paper to sustain the movement in California. Organizing the dispensary patrons might have lessened the need to fight a NIMBY backlash in another way: the more responsibility people feel towards the movement, the less they'll tolerate loitering by knuckleheads, and some of the knuckleheads would have been transformed, just from having been treated with intellectual respect, into better citizens. The medical marijuana movement woulda coulda shoulda (maybe still can, although the forces of reaction have the momentum now) sought to educate and organize the thousands of dispensary patrons into a political force working towards healthcare reform in the community at large. Some of the NIMBYs might even have turned into allies if the nearby club had, for example, been involved in a serious campaign to prevent the pollution of San Francisco's once pristine water supply with chloramine. Why shouldn't that be "our issue," too? Oregon Honors Leveque Phil Leveque, the Oregon doctor who unstintingly authorized cannabis use by patients in the early days following legalization, when almost all his colleagues were afraid to do so, has received a bill from the State Board of Medical Examiners to pay for his own prosecution. The bill is for $21,127.10. Leveque's license was suspended for three months in 2002 because he hadn't been conducting physicals (which were not explicitly required) or keeping records (for security reasons). The Board created "the Leveque Rule," insisting on physical exams, and Leveque hired a physician's assistant to conduct them when he resumed practice. But his license was suspended again in December 2004, and revoked earlier this year. Leveque has appealed the revocation of his license by the Board. You'd think this would stay the hounds. "If you fail to send payment in full or make other arrangements, we may issue a lien on all of your property, both real and personal. We may then record the lien with your county and/or execute on the warrant. This means we can garnish your wages, your bank accounts, or seize your property to pay the debt in full." Leveque is 82, recently widowed, a World War II combat infantryman with a heroic record. Oregon thanks you, Dr. Leveque! - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom