WE HAVE A DRUG FOR EVERYTHING, EXCEPT THE PARANOIA ABOUT POT

You have to admire people who endure painful, incapacitating illnesses with
the occasional aid of a marijuana cigarette. Were it me, I'd wimp out. None
of that medical marijuana for me. Instead, bring on the medical morphine --
the real stuff, the rocket fuel, the rapid transit to the Land of Nod.

Funny thing is, I'd have more luck getting the morphine than the marijuana.
It's legal for doctors to prescribe morphine for cancer patients, Prozac
for women experiencing PMS, and Ritalin for first-graders whose minds tend
to stray a bit. But marijuana is a pipe dream. The "Reefer Madness"
boogeyman in the overstuffed medicine cabinets of our "drug-free society."
And thanks to that, all those people enduring painful, incapacitating
illnesses this week got yet another whack to their health.

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered the blow. Or, more accurately, Congress
did with its Controlled Substances Act. On Monday, the justices ruled 8-0
that the federal law specifically rejects the notion that marijuana might
have any medical benefits. Until now, nine states have used "medical
necessity" as the loophole that sufferers of AIDS, cancer, multiple
sclerosis and other debilitating illnesses can slip through to legally
consume marijuana.

Many of those patients say the otherwise illegal drug has eased their pain,
reduced their nausea and heightened their appetites.

New Mexico nearly passed its own medical-marijuana bill in this year's
legislative session. Competing versions of the bill survived each chamber.
But both of them withered away on the session's final day, pawns to a
larger political battle over the tax cut that Gov. Gary Johnson had demanded.

The Republican governor, who has taken aim at the nation's "war on drugs,"
couldn't afford to lose the medical-marijuana battle. In his package of
seven drug-reform measures, it had seemed the most benign of the bunch.

It carried almost none of those "soft on crime" overtones that turn
political guts into Jell-O. It didn't make life any easier for addicts and
drug dealers. And it fit the new political requirement of compassionate
lawmaking.

Johnson needed such a victory to tout on his national speaking tour
following the session. And certainly, the issue needed the publicity New
Mexico could have given it to get Congress' attention.

As it stands, said Sen. Cisco McSorley, an Albuquerque Democrat who pushed
some of Johnson's reforms, the only way to revive the state's bill is by
changing the federal law.

"The Republican president and the Republican congress ought to do what they
said they would do and return power to the states and let them pass their
own laws," he said.

Rep. Joe Thompson, an Albuquerque Republican who joined McSorley in the
drug-reform quest, agreed. But changing the federal law won't be easy.

Few politicians want to risk their re-elections on drug-reform bills.
Someone with the caliber to persuade them otherwise is our senior senator,
Pete Domenici. But he threatened to oust state Republican Party Chairman
John Dendahl recently after Dendahl stood up for Johnson's war on the war
on drugs.

"I wasn't going to call the senator and ask for his help," Thompson said dryly.

Woody Smith, a retired state district judge and chairman of Johnson's Drug
Policy Advisory Group, called the political balking "an inertia that seems
unstoppable."

"I'm tired of people saying, 'What kind of a message does this send to
children?'" he said. "People are dying every day from cigarettes and
alcohol. Not one person I know of has died from marijuana. Who are we to
say that if you're dying, a doctor can't prescribe something for you
because we're afraid of the message that will send to children?

"I'm getting more and more cynical," he said. "What we're doing now is so
wrong. It's real easy to get down and depressed."

But, hey, it's OK to get down and depressed. After all, you can get drugs
for that.

Nelson's column runs on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.