August 5, 1998
By Luiza Chwialkowska
See Canadian
AIDS Patient Sues To Force Government To Provide Medical Marijuana
MARIJUANA HELPED TO SAVE MY LIFE, PROMINENT HARVARD SCHOLAR SAYS
Stephen Jay Gould tells Toronto court to allow medical use of drug
His books crowd best-seller lists, he holds 40 honorary degrees, and in legendary
lectures that combine poetry with the study of ancient fossils, he has taught generations
of Harvard students how life evolved on Earth.
In July 1982, doctors told geologist Stephen Jay Gould—whose mind dwells in
prehistory and who measures time in billions of years—that he had eight short months
to live. With his career in full bloom, he was diagnosed with a rare and incurable cancer
called abdominal mesothelioma.
A case study in determination, Mr. Gould was one of the first
people on Earth to beat the disease, thanks to surgery, radiation, and years of torturous
chemotherapy. But the "most important effect upon my eventual cure," he says
in hindsight, was the illegal drug, marijuana.
Mr. Gould is one in a chorus of patients and experts whose stories and studies will be
heard today in Ontario General Division Court, where a Toronto AIDS patient is suing the
federal government for the right to smoke marijuana as part of his medical treatment.
An academician who hates to fog his prodigious mind with any kind of substance—he
doesn’t touch alcohol and hates drugs—Mr. Gould smoked marijuana to reduced the
otherwise uncontrollable nausea that came with the chemotherapy that saved his life.
"I was miserable and came to dread the frequent treatments
with an almost perverse intensity," he wrote of the chemotherapy.
"Absolutely nothing in the available arsenal of (anti-nausea medications) worked
at all."
Marijuana, on the other hand, "worked like a charm."
Marijuana also works for Jim Wakeford, a 53-year-old Toronto community activist with
AIDS, who says his right to smoke the drug for its anti-nausea and appetite-inducing
effects is protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
"It is beyond my comprehension," wrote Mr. Gould of
marijuana laws, "that any humane person would withhold such a beneficial substance
from people in such great need simply because others use it for different purposes."
Mr. Wakeford is asking for a constitutional exemption from the laws he has to break to
produce and possess the drug. He also wants the court to force the federal government to
"produce and/or provide (him) a lawful and safe source of medicinal marijuana."
The founder of such highly regarded charities as the Oolagen Community Centre, the
Ontario Association of Children’s Mental Health Centres, and the Casey House
Foundation, Mr. Wakeford almost died this spring while waiting for this case to be heard.
His doctor, Toronto AIDS specialist John Goodhew, says smoking two marijuana cigarettes
a day is keeping Mr. Wakeford alive.
AIDS was causing him to literally waste away earlier this year. His weight dropped from
140 pounds to 118 pounds. He was put on intensive intravenous
feeding that gave him hepatitis and nearly killed him.
Mr. Wakeford quit that and used marijuana to stimulate his appetite instead. He is
now back to 132 pounds and will restart his anti-AIDS medicines when he gains more weight.
When he starts them again, however, he will still need the marijuana. Like Mr. Gould, he
uses it to fight nausea.
His lawyer, Osgoode Hall law professor Alan Young, will argue today that Canada’s
marijuana laws violate Mr. Wakeford’s rights under Sections 7 and 15 of the Charter.
"Criminalizing the therapeutic use of marijuana constitutes
a deprivation of life, liberty and security of the person (Section 7)," Mr. Young
states in court documents. "State interference with bodily integrity and serious
state-imposed psychological stress constitutes a serious breach of security of the
person."
The Controlled Drugs and Substances Act also violates Section 15 of the Charter, says
Mr. Young, because it "denies (Mr. Wakeford) equal benefit of the law on the basis of
the enumerated ground of physical disability." The legislation also discriminates
against AIDS victims, he will tell the court.
Rather than bringing a live caravan of witnesses before the court, lawyers have
submitted testimony in the form of written affidavits over the past two months. Today is
the first time they will argue in person before Judge Harry LaForme.
Mr. Young will summarize four volumes of evidence consisting of four personal stories,
including Mr. Gould’s, and expert opinions from seven pharmacologists, psychiatrists,
oncologists, and AIDS specialists.
The medical experts include Lester Grinspoon, a professor of
psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who has been studying the social and medicinal
aspects of cannabis since 1969, and documented Mr. Gould’s case in a book Marihuana—The Forbidden Medicine.
"Marijuana is the wonder drug of the future," Dr. Grinspoon told the Citizen
in an interview yesterday.
Comparing it to penicillin, Dr. Grinspoon said the drug is versatile in its uses.
"It can help glaucoma, migraines, muscle spasms, and nausea," he says, is cheap
to produce, ("30 to 40 cents per dose rather than $30-$40 for conventional
anti-nausea medicines,") and is "non-toxic."
"One to two thousand people in the U.S. die every year from
Aspirin, but no one has ever documented a death from marijuana," said Dr. Grinspoon.
Mr. Wakeford, on the other hand, might die without it.
"The marijuana is what is allowing him to eat and live," insists Dr. Goodhew.
A verdict is likely to take several weeks, but could come as early as this afternoon.
Mr. Wakeford vows to continue his fight regardless of today’s outcome.
He won a $50,000 grant from the federal Court Challenges program
that supports cases challenging legislation under the equality provisions of the Charter.
He has also raised $10,000 for the Wakeford Medical Marijuana Expense Fund and is looking
for more donations.
"As long as I’m still alive, I will try to get safe, clean, and affordable
medical marijuana for everyone with HIV and AIDS," he says.
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