POT FOR PAIN?

House Panel Hears Case for Medical Marijuana

MONTGOMERY -- Supporters of medical marijuana, including a Butler man
suffering from two forms of cancer, asked a House Judiciary
subcommittee Wednesday to approve a bill allowing doctors to prescribe
the drug to patients.

Donald Prockup, a carpenter by trade battling leukemia and
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, brought a box full of what he said were 1,000
prescriptions he had to help him deal with pain from his illnesses --
none of which, Prockup said, worked as well as marijuana.

"This medical marijuana alleviates a lot of this," Prockup told
members of the House Judiciary Committee's Civil Justice Subcommittee.
"I won't need (these drugs) any more."

The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Laura Hall, D-Huntsville, would
allow Alabama doctors to prescribe marijuana to alleviate the symptoms
caused by 13 different medical conditions, including cancer, HIV/AIDS,
multiple sclerosis, seizures and glaucoma.

It would also allow doctors to prescribe marijuana for any medical
condition that severely limits a person's ability to perform "major
life activities" or would cause serious injury to a person's safety or
medical health if not prescribed.

Hall, whose son died of AIDS 15 years ago, said marijuana could have
alleviated some of the symptoms that he faced in his final months,
including nausea and loss of appetite. She called the bill "very personal."

"This is a difficult week for me," she said. "This week, in 1992, our
son was dying of AIDS. He was very ill, and if I'd had any opportunity
to make that time easier, I would have done that."

Michael Phillips, a former Montgomery Advertiser writer who suffers
from a benign brain tumor that gives him seizures, said four surgeries
to remove the tumor have failed. He told the committee that marinol --
an FDA-approved drug whose active ingredient is THC, which is also
found in marijuana -- has not controlled seizures he suffers due to
his condition.

Marijuana, he said, reduced seizures from three to five a day to two
seizures every six to eight weeks. He said he has been arrested twice
for possession.

"Because of my disability, I'm considered a criminal, because of my
four unsuccessful brain surgeries," he said.

Twelve states have decriminalized the use of medical marijuana,
according to the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York-based group that
seeks changes to national drug policies. In 2004, 76 percent of
respondents in a Press-Register/University of South Alabama poll said
they approved of doctors prescribing marijuana to patients.

Committee members did not vote on the bill at Wednesday's public
hearing.

No one spoke in opposition to the bill, a fact noted by subcommittee
Vice Chairman Charles Newton, D-Greenville.

Newton said the witnesses made an "outstanding case, an eloquent case"
for the bill, but that he wants to hear from any opponents.

"We may ask why other states have not legalized it," he said. "We need
to be more informed."

The Legislature has only four business days left on its calendar, and
Newton noted that it would be very difficult -- but not necessarily
impossible -- to pass the bill into law.

Hall said she would be content with getting the Judiciary Committee to
approve the it.

"I'm not known for having bills with easy roads," she said.