RELUCTANT ADVOCATES SAY IT'S THE BEST OPTION

Andrea Stone lies on a futon in a small room she rents in an old house
at the foot of Skinner Butte.

It's just after noon, and Stone struggles to get her ailing body
moving.

Feeling nauseous from prescription drugs, her bones aching, she stops
chatting with visitors, unable to speak, and reaches for a small glass
bong.

With her boyfriend's assistance, she loads the water pipe with some
marijuana bud and lights up. She sucks in the smoke, exhales and
closes her eyes, slowly rocking back and forth.

"I'm just hurtin' so bad," she says, resting her forehead on one
hand.

She takes hit after hit, eight or 10 in all, pausing between each. Her
dog, Nikita, sits on the edge of the bed, chewing on a bone, oblivious
to her master's misery.

Finally, Stone coughs a little, pulls on her slippers and rises,
prepared to face the day as best as someone can whose body is slowly
destroying itself.

Stone is having a good day.

"This is the best I've felt in two days," she says. "I thought pretty
sure I'd be throwing up this morning."

In marijuana, Stone and thousands of other sick people have found a
drug that helps them in ways that other drugs don't. It curbs nausea,
stimulates appetite, eases pain, relaxes muscle spasms and combats the
side effects of pharmaceutical drugs.

Yet despite widespread anecdotal evidence, growing medical consensus
about its benefits and state laws permitting its medicinal use,
marijuana remains very much a taboo drug.

Many patients remain fearful of losing their jobs, of running afoul of
the law, of being outcast by family and neighbors. And many doctors
are leery of recommending their patients smoke a substance with no
controlled dosage or reliable supply, and which remains illegal in the
eyes of the federal government.

But seriously ill people such as Stone simply know that marijuana
makes them feel better. And in some cases, it can be the difference
between life and death.

"The Lesser Of Two Evils"

Sharon Place was watching her 13-year-old son waste away. He was
unable to keep food down, vomiting violently after eating. He'd been
in and out of hospitals six times in two years, one time for six weeks.

"He lost 35 pounds in eight weeks," Place said in an interview at her
home on the outskirts of Eugene. "He was nothing more than a limp
thing lying in bed. I had to make a choice."

Doctors had diagnosed a severe case of gastroesophageal reflux disease
- - in which excess stomach acid backs up into the esophagus - and
cyclical vomiting syndrome, but they were at a loss to find a
treatment that worked.

They were giving him prescription drugs at three times the dose
recommended for adults, Place said. As a last resort, they proposed
that the boy undergo surgery to tie off his stomach to stop the vomiting.

"My son is dying and no one can do anything about it," she said. "The
doctors would send him home (from the hospital) and say, 'Bring him
back when he gets sick.' "

Place had experience as a hospice worker, taking care of cancer
patients, and had seen how marijuana helped stimulate their appetites.

So she took a step no mother would take lightly: She had her son try
smoking marijuana, to see if that would help.

"My biggest fear was, is my kid going to survive. I had to go that
extreme, that I have tried everything, to save my child," she said.

"He tried two hits of cannabis. It was like night and day," Place
said. "Within 10 minutes, he said, 'That broth you made sounds really
good.' "

Some of the doctors at Doernbecher Children's Hospital in Portland who
had treated Place's son didn't want him to use marijuana. But his Lane
County physician consulted with specialists who confirmed the severity
of the boy's illness and concluded marijuana might help. As a result,
Place's son became the first minor in Oregon to receive a medical
marijuana card.

The doctor had some concerns about the social and psychiatric
implications of marijuana use for an adolescent, but now has no doubts
that it's made a huge difference.

"It is now my belief in the year and a half I've treated (the boy)
that the benefits have outweighed the risks," said the doctor, who
asked that he not be named. "I see a kid who hasn't been hospitalized
in over a year, who by my assessment is doing well.

"He's developing normally. He has appropriate interaction with peers.
I don't see (him) like he's stoned all the time. He's like a normal
kid whose symptoms are under control."

And Place sees a boy who no longer is wasting away. He takes two or
three hits in the morning to stimulate his appetite. He might not
smoke again until evening, when he takes about three hits before
dinner and one more near the end of the meal to help get a few more
bites down.

"I've got a seriously ill child who uses marijuana to eat," she said.
"Marijuana keeps the illness in a remissive kind of state. It's been
the least toxic, most capable thing for keeping the disease under
control for the longest period of time."

Her son doesn't attend public schools, but is part of a local
home-school network. He's tested annually and "does well
academically," his mother said.

The teen, now 15, declined to be interviewed for this story, but his
mother agreed to talk about his condition and how marijuana has helped
him. To protect his privacy, she asked that his name not be used.

Because of the anti-drug stigma surrounding marijuana, "he feels very
private about it," Place said. "It hasn't been easy for him."

But she has no qualms about encouraging her son to smoke a substance
that's still widely viewed as a harmful, illicit drug.

"When I compare that with the drugs they had to offer, I picked the
lesser of two evils," she said. "I just look at my son every day. If
he can get up and eat and participate in half the activities normal
teen-agers do, that's a blessing."

"It Makes A Big Difference"

For Andrea Stone, marijuana helps her cope with the crippling effects
of a rare disease and to keep from throwing up the pharmaceuticals she
takes to keep it in check.

It took seven doctors and one year before Stone, 24, was diagnosed in
1998 with systemic mastocytosis. The disease causes her body to
produce too many mast cells, which are supposed to help the body fend
off disease. In Stone's case, excess mast cells have accumulated in
different parts of her body, including her bones, her
gastro-intestinal tract and her skin.

Trouble arrives when something triggers those cells to degranulate, or
pop open, releasing histamines into her body, bringing on a painful
attack. Stress is the primary trigger, though an allergic reaction to
food can also cause an attack. The affliction causes nausea, muscle
spasms, cramping, bone pain and skin lesions.

In a worst case, if too many mast cells degranulate at once, she could
go into anaphylactic shock - in effect a massive allergic reaction -
and die.

No cure is known for systemic mastocytosis, so Stone treats the
symptoms with a variety of pharmaceutical drugs, including
antihistamines, anti-depressants and painkillers, which have their own
side effects. She tried "every kind of anti-nausea medicine," but none
was as effective as marijuana.

She tried Marinol, a synthetic version of marijuana's most active
ingredient, THC, in pill form, but "it messed with my head," she said.

Smoking marijuana, though, "almost immediately helps with the nausea"
and muscle spasms, she said.

"It takes the edge off pain. If I'm throwing up, it will help it stop.
It calms my stomach. It makes a big difference."

Her doctor said he would prefer Stone used Marinol, but defers to her
judgment.

"I don't have her illness and can't feel what she feels," said Dr.
Mark Rarick, a hematologist-oncologist at Kaiser-Permanente in
Portland. "Her illness is such a devastating thing for her, not only
because she's young, but because of the side effects and symptoms,
that my philosophy is she needs to guide me on what works."

If Stone has a good supply, she might smoke three to four grams of
marijuana throughout the day, equivalent to three to six joints,
depending on their size. She said she seldom feels stoned after smoking.

She smokes mostly through a bong, a cylindrical glass pipe that uses
water to cool the smoke. Like many patients who want to avoid the ill
effects of raw smoke, she often uses a vaporizer. In Stone's case, the
device is a small electric box with two car cigarette lighters on top.

The lighters heat the bud enough to vaporize its active chemicals
without burning the leaf. When she wants more immediate pain relief,
she smokes using a conventional lighter.

Stone and her boyfriend rent a small room in a friend's house and
don't have a place to grow cannabis for her use. They've been trying
to grow at another house, but often must rely on fellow marijuana
patients and black market growers who supply medical patients.

She has good days and bad days.

On good days, she'll go for a walk or go for coffee. "Things like that
are big for me," she said.

On bad days, she might not get out of bed.

"When it starts getting bad for more than one day, it's emotionally
draining," she said. "I feel like I'm teetering on the edge, like I'm
about to go overboard."

Marijuana helps her eat, eases her pain and keeps her from getting
stressed out. It enables her to get out of bed.

"If I can't get out of bed," she said, "I can't have a life."