Pubdate: Thu, 22 May 2008
Source: Sacramento News & Review (CA)
Copyright: 2008 Chico Community Publishing, Inc.
Contact:  http://newsreview.com/sacto/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/540
Author: Nick Miller
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

THE HEALING POWER OF POT

In A World Of Chronic Pain, Terminal Disease And Exorbitant 
Prescription-Drug Costs, Why Is Medicinal Marijuana Left In The 
Lurch? Four Sacramento Pot Patients Tell Their Stories.

It's early spring in Sacramento. Trees are filling out with leaves; 
buds are beginning to flower. The morning air is fresh, crisp, clean. 
A security guard at a downtown medicinal-marijuana dispensary checks 
IDs from behind a security door. A customer slips a card through the 
slot. The metal screen unlocks.

"Come on in."

The young man posing as a customer brandishes a handgun.

"Listen up!" the gunman yells. He wants the money. And the weed. He 
points the gun at the guard's face. "Do you want to die today?"

Bad move.

The guard may sport humdrum blue-gray garb, but his tattooed arms, 
shiny bald head and no-nonsense demeanor hint that he can hold his 
own and then some.

"I'm not going to die today, motherfucker!" he yells, reaching for 
the man's gun and forcing him to the ground. A scuffle ensues. 
Another man armed with a sawed-off shotgun storms into the dispensary 
lobby. Two-on-one. Out of nowhere, a patient joins the fight against 
the two intruders. Then an employee. The trio wrestles away the 
shotgun and force the gunmen out the door. Furniture is tossed. A 
stair railing breaks loose. The suspects flee. Thankfully, nobody is 
severely injured. Cops arrive. Later, a KCRA helicopter decorates the 
cloudless sky.

The robbery attempt is all over the local 5 p.m. news.

"Attempted robbery at pot club! Suspects at large! Stay tuned!"

It's the same old story every time medical marijuana hits the 
mainstream media. Missing are the other 364 days of the year that 
patients visit Sacramento dispensaries and safely access affordable 
medication that significantly reduces dependence on expensive 
prescription drugs and dramatically improves the quality of their lives.

Voters approved the use of medicinal marijuana with the passage of 
Proposition 215 over a decade ago, yet there's still the perception 
of pot as an illicit street drug. For one, medical marijuana is still 
illegal under federal law, a fact that makes the Sacramento County 
Board of Supervisors nervous. In fact, in March, they refused to 
implement the state ID card program in the county, a move that 
prescription-pot proponents say decreases safe access for patients.

Missing from the news reports are the patients themselves, who suffer 
from a panoply of diseases and disorders, ranging from AIDS to cancer 
to post-traumatic-stress disorder. Some of the patients have even 
fought for democracy in Iraq, only to return home and find the will 
of the people of the state of California thwarted by political 
expediency. They're fighting overseas, then returning home broken 
physically, mentally, or both, only to be denied the one thing that 
brings many of them relief: medicinal marijuana.

Is this a great country or what?

Sgt. Jason Franks regularly traveled Route Irish, a Baghdad 
thoroughfare littered with IED potholes, for months without incident. 
When he arrived one February morning at Baghdad International Airport 
and veered left into a secured area, it was as routine as routine 
gets in war-ravaged Iraq. Suddenly, a blinding flash and an 
ear-splitting explosion. His truck immediately died, its front 
windshield shattered, blown out. Debris rained down. A car bomb had 
exploded right behind him. His ears rang like psychedelic chapel 
bells at high noon.

Franks escaped unscathed, but the ringing lingered. A year later, in 
January 2006, an accident while he was stationed back in Texas 
irrevocably altered his life.

"We were moving a bunch of [artillery], and a lot of it fell on me," 
Franks says matter-of-factly. X-rays showed two herniated discs: one 
bulging into the spine, the other low on fluid, both permanently 
damaged. Doctors were quick to prescribe the holy trinity of 
painkillers: OxyContin, Percocet, Vicodin. Three times a day. Each. 
He became "a walking zombie." The men under his command covered for 
him at first, but finally, in July 2007, Franks received a medical 
discharge and moved to California.

The prescriptions kept coming.

"[Veterans Affairs] gave me a bottle of 500 Vicodin just like that," 
Franks recalls. He took the drugs, but he felt worse. The ringing 
returned. "I've been having ... I'm not going to say suicidal 
thoughts, but crazy thoughts, where some guy's gonna piss me off and 
I'm going to end up beating him up, like road rage or something 
stupid like that," he confesses. A father of four, the veteran lives 
with his wife and kids in Citrus Heights. Days-old stubble gathers on 
his chin, an Army cap shades his vulnerable-looking eyes. "That's not 
me," he says.

Daniel Aquino also knows about physical and mental pain. Last 
September, while tubing at Discovery Park on the American River, he 
suffered a horrific boating accident.

"I didn't even want to go boating," he laughs now. "Or get in the 
water, because I think the water's filthy."

Aquino took his turn on the inner tube, and even had a good time. 
Then it was someone else's turn.

"Right when I grabbed the back of the boat I felt a current, and my 
foot hit the propeller, the middle of it," Aquino remembers. He 
panicked, then screamed. "A rope caught my foot, then the propeller, 
which pulled me down into it and caught my swim shorts. I was so 
worried about drowning that I couldn't feel the propeller ripping me 
apart." He made it to the surface, where he saw his right leg was 
torn to shreds. He was relieved: It was only his leg.

"Then I looked down again and realized all my intestines were hanging 
out," he says. An ambulance came. "My six-pack was looking so good. 
Then that propeller ripped it right in half."

At the hospital, he learned he had permanent nerve damage. Multiple 
hip fractures. Aquino was sedated, a vegetable. Morphine. Percocet. 
He'd been on pharmaceutical drugs before, so he knew the drill. At 
15, he had been diagnosed as schizophrenic--he claims he was 
misdiagnosed and blames it on hormones, divorced parents and living 
in two homes. "I was just a pissed-off kid," he says. Doctors put him 
on antidepressants, antipsychotics and mood stabilizers. Risperdal. 
Haldol. Paxil. Cogentin. Zyprexa. "Take a pill so that you don't get 
the side effect from other pills," he explains. "I started going kinda crazy."

Aquino drank and experimented with street drugs. He'd get worse, then 
get more prescriptions. By age 20, he was overweight, with man-boobs 
and a potbelly. His hair was falling out. "For about six years of my 
life, I was pretty much sedated."

In pain, immobile and sickened by the side effects from his 
pharmaceutical regime, Aquino decided to seek out alternative treatment.

The same thing happened to Ruby Ring.

"I'm an ex-heroin addict," Ring reveals. "I did heroin for 26 years, 
and I've been clean for almost 22 now." Hard drugs; alcohol; new, 
harder drugs--Ring's a classic case of self-medication. "At one 
point, I was taking 200 milligrams of morphine a day," she remembers. 
"When you take a lot of morph, you don't sleep soundly." Add a bit of 
Norco and OxyContin, and you're dealing with a powerful Big Pharma cocktail.

Ring was diagnosed with cervical cancer, and surgery to remove tumors 
included a complete hysterectomy. She also has hepatitis C, which has 
progressed to stage-three liver fibrosis. She endured the flu-like 
symptoms of interferon/ribavirin therapy to no avail. "I'm like that 
one in 250,000 where the hep C treatment makes you worse," she says. 
The treatment failed, leaving her with two new problems: Type 2 
diabetes and high blood pressure.

Big Pharma failed Army veteran Louis A. McDaniel as well.

The 37-year-old Louisiana native's come a long way since the first 
Persian Gulf war, when he was a 13 Bravo cannon crew member blowing 
stuff up at Fort Drum, N.Y. "We didn't have the eye and ear 
protection that they have now in the military for the field that I 
was in," he explains. "I'm working around an instrument that emits 
more sound than any concert you've been to, but I've got 89 cent 
Wal-Mart plugs in my ears." Ruby Ring has battled addiction and 
illness her entire life. Pharmaceuticals made her a zombie; medicinal 
marijuana keeps her on the move. PHOTO BY JEREMY SYKES

Decibels up to 300 MHz, discharge clouds that caused near-zero 
visibility and lugging 100-pound crates of ammo across upstate New 
York took its toll on McDaniel. "Sometimes we'd have a mission where 
we'd have to expend all ammo, which means we would just let off every 
round that we had. Just to clean shop." He and his cannon crew would 
spend endless hours detonating artillery. Forty-five seconds a cycle. 
Hundreds and hundreds of rounds.

McDaniel was medically discharged in November of 1990. He was weighed 
down by insomnia, chronic pain and a vision disorder called Fuchs' 
dystrophy, which makes objects appear blurry because of corneal 
swelling. His eyesight is 20/100 in each eye and getting worse.

"I was completely out of the loop with all the pills I was taking," 
he says. "The Vicodin. Soma. The 800 milligrams of ibuprofen. I 
wasn't thinking clearly. I was tired, listless."

In 2005, he moved to Sacramento, quit the drugs and got a 
medicinal-marijuana prescription.

This April, UC Davis published unprecedented findings on the 
relationship between marijuana use and pain. Thirty-eight 
neuropathic-pain patients, with diseases such as diabetes and 
multiple sclerosis, were given a high-THC marijuana cigarette, a 
weaker one or a placebo. During each session, patients took a uniform 
number of puffs. Those that smoked marijuana experienced 
"significantly" reduced pain, relief that lasted as long as five 
hours, with "inconsequential" side effects.

Other major studies in the past 10 years also have dispelled the 
theory of marijuana as a useless stoner drug. Cannabinoids have been 
proven to inhibit cancer and tumor growth. Pot's a known pain 
inhibitor and can improve quality of life for terminal patients. It 
can reduce symptoms of appetite loss, depression, nausea, anxiety.

For McDaniel, marijuana was a last gasp. He quit pharmaceutical 
drugs, got a marijuana prescription (or "215," as they say) and began 
using a topical ganja cream to heal his ailing leg and ankle. "If I 
don't have my medication present--and by medication I mean medical 
cannabis--then I'm pretty much stuck in the house the remainder of the day."

He doesn't drive, so he takes light rail from Rancho Cordova to get 
his medication at a Southside-area dispensary. That's a lot of 
walking, so his leg has to be ready for a workout. Ganja cream, a 
THC-based lotion with a mild mango-butter smell, eases McDaniel's 
pain for hours. One $12 bottle usually lasts six weeks. For him, it's 
nothing short of a miracle drug--especially in a world of 
thousand-dollar prescription tabs. "Just dab a little bit around my 
ankle and leg when I get out of the shower," he explains. "From the 
very moment that I begin massaging it in, I feel results." McDaniel 
also smokes and eats food that contains marijuana. And, on that rare 
occasion when the pain's too much to bear, he'll make a cannabis-leaf 
tea infusion with hot water and honey.

There are two types of marijuana strains to choose from, and each 
produces different but beneficial effects. Indica strains are more 
effective for relieving pain. Sativa strains work better on mood 
disorders. McDaniel smokes indica marijuana as a painkiller, but if 
he has to work, he uses a sativa/indica blend. "I'm able to function 
through the day regardless what I smoke," he says. "It doesn't make 
me a vegetable" or get him too high.

Ruby Ring has been sober for 12 years, off heroin for 22 years and 
hasn't used tranquilizers or sleeping pills in six years. She started 
smoking marijuana because she was in pain from chronic disease and 
her pharmacopeial options were nil. "For me, medicinal marijuana is a 
way of functioning," she explains. "I'm not one of those people that 
sit on the couch all day, stare at the TV and smoke pot. I like the 
option of having an alternative to being drugged out on narcotics."

Ring uses a $700 medical-grade Volcano-brand vaporizer, which allows 
a patient to inhale only THC and no smoke. She says the effect of 
smoking without smoke is a more calming and therapeutic, which allows 
her to function and remain focused throughout the day. "Medicinal 
marijuana is not for everybody," she realizes. "Personally, it helps 
me tolerate my everyday pain and discomfort."

For Daniel Aquino, pot's a cure-all. When he was 20, improperly 
diagnosed as schizophrenic and jacked up on a rainbow of pills, he 
became frustrated with side effects and decided to quit all of his 
prescriptions and gave medicinal marijuana a try. Pot calmed him 
down--no more craziness, unpredictable behavior or zombification. He 
could do things; he started working out. "The doctor should have told 
me 'go ride a bike' instead of prescribing the pills," he said. No 
heat stroke. No dizziness. No high blood pressure. He got a job in 
construction. He worked out so much, he eventually became a personal 
trainer. By 22, he quit using marijuana, the erratic behavior of the 
past behind him.

Five years later, after being chopped up by a boat propeller, Aquino 
got out of the hospital, quit the pain meds and went back on medicinal pot.

It eased the pain, but he was depressed. "I'm a personal trainer. All 
my friends are personal trainers. All they talked about was 'Hey, I 
lifted this today.' I didn't care. Get out of my room." Would he 
become his 20-year-old self all over again? "I woke up every morning 
in pain. I wanted to cry. I was told it'd be one year to recover."

He lost 20 pounds and loafed around the house ripping blood-soaked 
bandages out of his wounds and repacking them with fresh gauze. But 
the weed helped, giving him a positive outlook and the strength to 
work out. He was "85 percent recovered" after only eight months of 
rehab, well ahead of his doctor's prognosis.

In a way, prescription drugs caused more damage than that spinning 
propeller blade. "It's pharmaceuticals that actually kill people," he 
says. "It's liquor that actually kills people."

That's an opinion apparently not shared by the Sacramento County 
Board of Supervisors. In March, the five-member board broke suit with 
40 other California counties and nixed a plan to implement 
medicinal-marijuana ID cards for patients, which would have ensured 
safe and standardized access to medication.

Supervisor Jimmie Yee wore a gray suit and blue tie the day 
Sacramento County killed patients' hope for safer access to medicinal 
marijuana. On that afternoon, Yee and Supervisor Roger Dickinson 
argued for the IDs, but a 3-2 vote by the five-member board voted not 
to issue cards to local patients. Sacramento joined 17 other counties 
that have sided with the federal government against enforcing state 
law. And while patients still can access medicinal marijuana, 
proponents contend the rejection of the state card is a major setback.

"There are clear advantages to having ID cards available to patients, 
especially in law-enforcement situations," explains Bruce Mirken of 
the Marijuana Policy Project. For example, if a patient is pulled 
over, cited for marijuana but only has a doctor's prescription, a 
law-enforcement officer must verify with the physician the veracity 
of the 215 recommendation. If the doctor's unavailable--as so often 
they are--the patient may have to spend some time in jail.

With the state ID card, there's no confusion. Patients don't get 
hassled, and law-enforcement doesn't waste time or money arresting 
individuals who can't be prosecuted.

"To fail to provide these cards, as per state law, is just 
irresponsible," argues Kris Hermes of Americans for Safe Access, an 
Oakland-based member organization that promotes legal access to 
cannabis for therapeutics and research. "This decision does nothing 
but increase the potential for confusion and for people who are 
entirely innocent to be arrested and put through unnecessary misery."

Supervisor Yee joined Dickinson in support for the ID program, but in 
the past had voted against similar programs. "I did change," he 
confesses. "It's just that I'm becoming a little more sympathetic to 
those that could use medical marijuana in the proper manner. I'm 
starting to listen to those that say the use of medical marijuana is 
truly a relief."

Currently, only five people in the United States can legally smoke 
marijuana. Each month, the U.S. government mails these patients a 
circular tin filled with 300 joints. They're the last of a defunct 
federal compassion program from the 1970s. Everyone else using pot, 
recreationally or medicinally, even in California, is in violation of 
federal law.

But in Sacramento, state and local authorities don't prosecute 
legitimate patients with proper prescriptions. Neither do they go 
after the dispensaries that provide the weed. Problem is, the 
dispensaries have to regulate themselves: They pay millions to the 
Franchise Tax Board and employ local residents, but the county forces 
them to operate in a quasi-clandestine netherworld. "We want to be 
regulated," says one dispensary owner, who equates regulations with 
safer access to medicine for patients.

Ruby Ring volunteers two days a week at her dispensary. She also 
takes advantage of free yoga classes held on the premises, something 
she's never done before. "A lot of people think dispensaries are just 
places to buy pot," she says. "That's not what it is. You have to 
know how to use it to make yourself feel better. It helps me keep 
myself involved in life."

Louis A. McDaniel also gives back. After he quit pharmaceuticals and 
regained his strength, he became a certified massage therapist and 
now volunteers four days a week at his local dispensary. As patients 
come and go with bags of medicine, some stop and visit McDaniel's 
portable massage table in the surprisingly chic dispensary living 
room. The place is a veritable community center.

And the Drug Enforcement Administration could take it away at a 
moment's notice.

The last eight years under the Bush administration have seen an 
unprecedented federal crackdown on California medicinal-marijuana 
dispensaries and legitimate growers, who each day live in fear of 
having their businesses shut down, losing their families and going to 
jail for 25-plus years. Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has 
gone on the record stating he'll force the DEA to end raids in 
California. For a patient like Iraq war veteran Sgt. Jason Franks, 
safe access is a right he's most definitely earned, if anyone has.

In January 2005, Iraq held democratic elections. For three days 
straight, Sgt. Jason Franks guarded a polling place at a local school 
on Haifa Street in Baghdad. Franks didn't sleep a wink. "I can't nap 
when someone might shoot me."

Later, after the car-bomb explosion and his subsequent back injury, 
he was prescribed anti-anxiety meds. Franks couldn't stay awake. 
"They gave me some stuff for anxiety, but when I took it, I just 
slept all day." Clonazepam. Five milligrams. A hefty anxiolytic dose 
by any standard.

A physician recommended that Franks see a medicinal-marijuana doctor, 
so he got a pot prescription and headed to his local dispensary. It 
changed his life, and he now only takes high-blood-pressure and 
stomach-acid medication. He's no longer lethargic or in a quasi-coma. 
He has enough energy to be a good dad. "We don't hide it from them," 
Franks explains of his pot meds. "They know what I take. My 
12-year-old daughter is open with me about it. She says she likes me 
better on marijuana than on the pills."

This week, Franks is hitting the books hard, studying for finals at 
American River College. He wants to teach high school, but studying 
comes second to being a father. "I wait till my kids go to bed, and 
then I have time to do my homework."

Life's still a struggle. He can't go out to dinner with his wife 
because he's uncomfortable in crowds. At his kids' school events, he 
stands in the back near the door. "I have fear of suicide bombers," 
he says. "It's a seeded fear that I have. I get real anxious, then 
it's 'OK, I've got to go.'" He's seeing a therapist for his 
post-traumatic-stress disorder. The marijuana helps. He even started 
a veterans' meet-up at his local dispensary. They talk and go fishing 
near Discovery Park. Things are looking up, thanks to medical 
marijuana. He's not sure how he'd get along without it, especially 
now that he's been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, or TBI, from the war.

"I'd probably end up back on pills, honestly. I hate to say it, but 
there's really not much else for me at this point," Franks says. "I 
should have the right to access marijuana safely. I fought for that 
freedom. That's how I look at it."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom