MARIJUANA GROUP SAYS N.Y. SUPPORT IS GAINING

Many GOP District Voters Favor Idea for Medical Use

ALBANY -- After a bill to legalize medical use of marijuana passed
the Democrat-controlled Assembly but not the GOP-led Senate this
year, a national group is releasing polls showing that Conservative
Party members and voters in several Republican senators' districts
would favor the practice in New York.

Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project said the organization
succeeded in dispelling a common belief that right-wing voters are
against allowing people who have serious illnesses access to marijuana.

"Your voters aren't going to want to come and get you for wanting to
keep cancer patients out of jail," Mirken said of lawmakers.

Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. of Washington, D.C., found that
between 61 percent and 76 percent of 500 voters surveyed in each of
six GOP Senate districts -- including those of Thomas Morahan, R-New
City, Rockland County, and Dale Volker, R-Depew, Erie County, said
they were in favor of "allowing seriously and terminally ill patients
to use and grow a limited amount of medical marijuana if their
doctors recommend it." A survey of 500 Conservative Party voters
found that 55 percent would back limited medical use of marijuana.

Independent polls have also shown widespread support. A Gallup Poll
in 2005 found that 78 percent of Americans favored allowing doctors
to prescribe marijuana to reduce "pain and suffering."

The Conservative Party doesn't create its policies through polls,
Chairman Mike Long said in response. Conservatives are against
medical use of marijuana because it "opens a Pandora's box. We think
there's no control on who's using it, who may be selling it."

Beyond that, he said, there is enough medicine on the market to make
sick people comfortable, and use of marijuana is against federal law.

Mirken said there is enough of a track record in states that have
grow-your-own provisions to show that the programs work. Patients who
gave marijuana to people who weren't part of the program would be
breaking the law.

Twelve states allow patients to use pot, which has been found to
relieve nausea, increase appetite, reduce muscle spasms, alleviate
chronic pain and reduce intraocular (within the eye) pressure. It is
frequently used for serious conditions like AIDS, cancer, multiple
sclerosis and glaucoma.