EX-SHERIFF BACKS MEDICAL MARIJUANA BILL

An Austin Legislator Is An Unlikely Sponsor Of The Bill, Which Would Let
Certain Patients Use The Drug.

AUSTIN -- State Rep. Terry Keel of Austin urged a House panel Tuesday to
approve legislation allowing patients to smoke marijuana if their doctors
advised them it would ease their suffering better than any legal medication.

But Keel is not an Austin liberal trying to please a college-town
constituency. He's a former prosecutor and Travis County sheriff who four
years ago gave up his law enforcement career to run as a Republican for a
House seat in an increasingly conservative district in suburban north Austin.

"Many of you probably thought I was the last guy in the world to carry
this," Keel told the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee. "But it's good
public policy. I think it's time we have a full debate on this."

The panel deferred action on House Bill 513 for at least a week. But
members heard from several witnesses who echoed Keel's argument that
marijuana has proven effective for relieving discomfort associated with
such diseases as cancer, glaucoma, AIDS and multiple sclerosis.

The legislation would not technically legalize the use of marijuana for
medical purposes, and it would not allow physicians to prescribe it. It's
worded in such a way to give patients charged with possessing the
controlled substance the right to argue in court that they were advised by
a licensed medical doctor that the drug would ease their symptoms.

Keel said doctors would face discipline from organizations such as the
American Medical Association if they recommended marijuana use for someone
whose suffering was not severe.

East Texas resident George McMahon said that without medically sanctioned
marijuana, he would not have been able to endure the pain, spasms and
nausea he has lived with for more than a decade.

Carrying a tin bearing about 300 marijuana cigarettes into the committee
room, McMahon, 50, said he is permitted to use the drug under a grandfather
clause in a now-discontinued federal program.

"Without it, I wouldn't be alive today," he said. McMahon wouldn't reveal
the exact nature of his medical condition.

Committee Chairman Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen, co- author of the bill, said
the evidence that marijuana has medicinal value is overwhelming. But three
committee Republicans -- Rick Green of Dripping Springs, Robert Talton of
Pasadena and John Shields of San Antonio -- appeared to be struggling with
the notion that Texas might be inching its way toward legalized pot.

"Are we not encouraging them to break the law?" said Green, referring to
physicians or anyone who would help a patient obtain marijuana.

Keel said that marijuana seeds are not illegal and people who needed the
plant for medicinal use could plant it themselves.

"Strangely enough," Keel said, "this stuff grows like a weed."