The Need For Weed
January 27, 1999
From The Willamette Week
mzusman@wweek.com
http://www.wweek.com/
By Patty Wentz (pwentz@wweek.com)

When she voted to legalize medical marijuana early last November, Nancy didn’t know there was a tumor growing in her right breast. A couple of weeks later, though, she found the lump that pushed her into a medical free fall. By early December she learned it was malignant. By Christmas she’d had a mastectomy and was headed for several grueling chemotherapy treatments. (Marijuananews note: A sidebar explains: "Nancy did not want her real name to be used for this story because she was worried that her employer would judge her harshly for using marijuana." Prohibitionist propaganda has many ways of hurting people.)

Nancy had heard that Zofran worked better, but at 20 bucks a pill she couldn’t afford it. So she asked her doctor about marijuana.

Nancy’s doctor wrote a letter stating that she had chemotherapy-induced vomiting, an acceptable condition for medical use of marijuana. The letter, he explained, should keep her from being arrested for possessing a small amount of the drug until the Oregon Health Department has a system in place for patients to register.

But Nancy still has a big problem. Although her doctor in effect wrote her a prescription, he couldn’t tell her where to get it filled. Nancy, a Portlander in her early 40s, says she hasn’t smoked dope since her teens. She has no idea how to get any now.

"I’m not a marijuana user," she says, "and the thought of buying drugs off the street freaks me out."

Nancy’s story is becoming increasingly common as patients come up against one of the glitches in the medical-marijuana law. Even if they can find a doctor to approve their use of it, there is no established center that provides marijuana.

When California voters approved medical-marijuana use in 1996, cannabis buying clubs sprung up around the state. Although some were genuinely geared toward patients, others became notorious hangouts for recreational users.

(Marijuananews note: Even our friends have fallen for the prohibitionist propaganda.)

The Oregon law was written to preclude the establishment of such clubs here.

That provision helped garner support for the measure, but it left a gaping hole in the new law. Many patients, like Nancy, are confused. She assumed the passage of Measure 67 meant that there would be a safe and stable supply of marijuana for patients like her. "I didn’t grasp that they had no sanctioned way to get it," she says. "I thought there would be some alternative, getting it through a pharmacy or something."

Instead, she has learned, in order to follow the letter of the law, she has to grow it herself or be given a supply by another patient. Nancy doesn’t know any other medical-marijuana users. As for growing her own, she’s not in a position to wait for the plants to mature, even if she could somehow find some seeds.

In Nancy’s mind she really has only one choice: the street. Because of her physician’s letter, she’s probably safe from prosecution, but anyone who sells or even gives her pot is in a legal gray area.

Where to get marijuana is a common problem, especially for older people who have never even seen a joint, says David Smigelski, spokesperson for Oregonians for Medical Rights.

(Marijuananews note: Marijuana is easy for kids to get and hard for sick people to get. Marijuana prohibition works perfectly from the government’s perspective.)

Smigelski, a former WW reporter, says that while Measure 67 allows patients to grow up to six plants, getting the seeds or seedlings to plant is a problem OMR can’t help with. "We’re getting calls from people who have expertise in growing who are willing to help people," he says, "and we have people who want to know how to get seeds." But OMR won’t play matchmaker. Smigelski says he doesn’t know of any informal networks of patients that have sprung up to meet the demand. For now, he says, patients are going to have to fend for themselves.

Dr. Mary O’Hearn, an AIDS specialist at Oregon Health Sciences University, says doctors at her clinic have written three letters for patients who want to use medical marijuana, which stimulates the appetite and prevents the slow starvation that is a side effect of AIDS. She has no idea where those patients are getting their supply. "I haven’t really talked to them about that," she says. "They seem to have access."

As much as it unnerves her, Nancy says she’ll probably have to buy pot the same way everybody does: through the underground. She says she has a friend who knows someone who might be able to help. Faced with another round of chemotherapy, she doesn’t have time to grow her own, and she has nowhere else to turn.

DOCTORS’ ORDERS
Since Oregon’s medical-marijuana law kicked in on Dec. 3, the folks at Oregonians for Medical Rights have received more than 400 calls.

"The most often-asked question is ‘Where do I find a doctor?’" says David Smigelski, spokesperson for OMR, which ran the the Measure 67 campaign.

Measure 67 doesn’t require doctors to prescribe pot in the same way they would prescribe penicillin. All a patient needs to be legal is a note from a physician stating that he or she has a condition that is covered under the medical-marijuana law.

Still, most doctors seem to be skittish about signing a letter. Some may fear being labeled as a "pot doctor." Others have legal concerns. Measure 67 did not legalize pot—it simply exempted patients from prosecution. It remains to be seen what consequences doctors may face.

MEDICINAL MARIJUANA LAW LEADS NEEDY TO DISTRIBUTION IMPASSE
By Ryan Landers, Associated Press

(Marijuananews note: The AP wire carried this story with the headline: "MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISTRIBUTION IMPERFECT" which might win a Pulitzer Prize for understatement.)

"It Was Really Horrible When The Clubs Shut Down. (People) Don’t Know Where To Get Plants And Seeds."

MIDDLETOWN—Ryan Landers didn’t plan on being a farmer. Then again, he never planned on getting AIDS and needing marijuana to stay hungry enough to keep him from wasting away.

He used to buy pot at the Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative. But that club, like many that opened after a 1996 medical marijuana initiative passed, has been shut down by federal court order.
See
Oakland Club Challenges Constitutionality of Federal Medical Marijuana Ban;
San Francisco To Test New Democratic State Administration -- 2 Articles
and links

Now many club members, including Landers, increasingly are forced to seek out small, low-profile groups and buy from street dealers.

Dozens have been arrested for having plants. Short of a federal change of heart allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana, co-ops that grow pot to give or sell to patients may be their best hope.

For Landers, that means traveling 100 miles to this tiny, rural town in the wine county about 90 miles north of San Francisco to buy the pot that will ease his nausea. Here, Proposition 215 author Dennis Peron and members of his two defunct San Francisco pot clubs grow marijuana. This summer, Peron plans to begin delivering plants to thousands of San Francisco patients who will pay for them at cost.

"This was really horrible when the clubs shut down," Landers said. "(People) don’t know where to get plants and seeds. It’s been more than two years. People should be growing pot. They shouldn’t be scared to."

But in California, then-Attorney General Dan Lungren oversaw a series of state-initiated efforts that closed about two-thirds of the clubs, most in Northern California. Federal raids and court rulings also contributed to the shutdowns, although some advocates say that for every club that has closed, at least another has opened—albeit quietly—in its place.

State officials and medical marijuana advocates say a national Institutes of Medicine review scheduled for release next month will be critical in getting federal officials to consider reclassifying marijuana as a less-dangerous drug or allowing doctors to prescribe it. The 18-month review of the health effects and medical treatment benefits of marijuana was ordered by drug czar Barry McCaffrey.

"The cannabis clubs were a great stopgap measure ... but it wasn’t a solution," said Scott Imler, director of the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center in West Hollywood. The center is one of two well-known pot clubs in Southern California and has 1,100 members from Bakersfield to Palm Springs.

Imler and others hope things will change with a new governor and attorney general in office and new district attorneys and sheriffs in communities that have been hostile to distribution efforts.

"The main problem we’ve had is lack of guidance to law enforcement," said Jason Browne, a trustee of the Humboldt Cannabis Center in Arcata. "Everyone is waiting for someone else to do something and meanwhile the patients are at risk."

Brian Steel, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, would not comment on why smaller co-ops have survived while the larger groups were shut down.

"The Department of Justice is committed to following the law that Congress has passed, and to that end, Congress has said the use or distribution of marijuana is illegal," he said. "Consistent with that, that’s what we’re going to do."

Advocates say the clubs were safe and convenient.

"I like the clubs better. There’s no hassle, no pressure. You get what you need and leave," said Chris Ward, 39, who bought marijuana at the Oakland club to ease the effects of chemotherapy. Now he plans to go to a new Berkeley co-op, about 200 miles south of his home in Oak Run.

Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, hasn’t said whether he’ll support proposed legislation to authorize $1 million annually to study medical marijuana or a plan to specify or standardize the enforcement of Proposition 215.

"I believe good science should resolve this issue," Davis has said.

Attorney General Bill Lockyer, also a Democrat, said he voted for the medical marijuana law and agrees more guidance is needed. His mother and sister both died of leukemia.

"There are omissions and gaps and ambiguities in the initial statute that would benefit from clarification," Lockyer said. "It’s unclear exactly who can be a caretaker and exactly what the system is for setting up a dispensary and clinic."

Patients can still get marijuana at operations in San Francisco, West Hollywood, San Diego, Fairfax, Sonoma County, Ukiah, Arcata, Berkeley and Hayward. Peron’s farm was twice raided by Drug Enforcement Agency officials, who confiscated hundreds of plants but made no arrests.

"If our law were tighter and there was more of a clinic—not cult structure to the statute—that might be partially persuasive to the federal government if they see there is a tight regulatory system."
(Marijuananews note: And if he believes that….)