A LONELY VIGIL

Although his wife is gone, Jim Miller of Dover Township continues his
crusade to allow the use of medical marijuana for the chronically ill.

Jim Miller, 51, is a widower, now.

He watched his wife's body deteriorate under the scourge of multiple
sclerosis, and he nursed her through the worst of it.

"She would cry out in pain like a wounded animal," Miller said, his voice
steady, from the construction site where he works as a carpenter. But "she
never cried, not in front anyone but me. And she was always smiling" around
others.

Cheryl Miller, who was 57 and could not move in the final months of her
life, is gone -- relieved of the pain, released from the prison her body
had steadily become over her 32-year battle with multiple sclerosis. But
her bravery and her cause live on for her husband.

Miller, who lives in the Silverton section of Dover Township, spent the
weeks and months following her death in June organizing memorials in
Washington, D.C., and throughout the country, where she was a hero to so
many with multiple sclerosis and other chronic, debilitating diseases,
fighting until the end for the legalization of medicinal marijuana.

He spoke at rallies in Wisconsin and upstate New York. He's organized press
conferences and dealt with the media continuously.

The activism, he said, may have interrupted his grieving process. He has
not been following the proper, linear progression of grief. But there is
work to do.

Cheryl Smith, after all, continued her trips to rally in D.C. through the
worst of the pain. "You have no idea," he said, how difficult those trips were.

Those with whom he battles are sympathetic to the plight of those like his
wife, they say. But they don't believe the anecdotal evidence of
marijuana's medical benefits warrants legalization.

"The situation is clear," said Ocean County First Assistant Prosecutor
Terrence P. Farley, an outspoken critic of medical marijuana who decried
legalization in a letter to the Ocean County Observer in Feb., 2003. "There
is no proof it helps ... no valid reports it helps multiple sclerosis."

But, said Miller, there is no proof because studies have not been allowed.
Such studies, he believes, would validate anecdotal testimonies with
empirical evidence.

Farley said there are legal medications, like Marinol, that utilize the
medicinal qualities of marijuana. He added that the University of Albany
recently released a study confirming that marijuana adversely affects
fertility in both men and women.

"These people don't want to take the medicine - they want to take dope," he
said.

The testimony of the sick, however, disputes his opinion, according to
Miller, who said such medicine did not work as well as the real drug.

His wife did not smoke marijuana when she could get it. They often put it
in salad dressing or other food products.

The beneficiaries of medical marijuana, proponents argue, are chronically
ill and not worried about the long-term effects of the drug or concerned
with procreating.

In the heat of these arguments, Miller regards with cautious optimism a
recent decision by the United States Supreme Court to allow a California
court's ruling that said doctors could recommend - not prescribe -
marijuana. The decision may make "it easier" for other states to join the
nine states - Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada,
Oregon and Washington - that have legalized medical marijuana.

A critically ill person asks a doctor " 'What can I do?' How can you say 'I
can't tell you?' " said Miller, who added that the High Court's action may
"make doctors feel more secure."

Farley said he hadn't read the entire decision, but from what he understood
from news accounts, it "won't have any impact here or anywhere outside the
9th circuit," the California court which decided the case.

"It doesn't mean you can use it in New Jersey," Farley said.

But that's precisely what Miller is working so hard to accom-plish.

He thinks there is a very good chance that legislation to legal-ize medical
marijuana in New Jersey will be introduced "early next session."

The chances of it passing "de-pend heavily on the results of the next
election," he said. If state government is controlled by Democrats, he said
he would be optimistic.

But either way, he said, he will keep battling for legalization, even if he
were to deem it a hopeless cause.

His wife, he said, kept fighting, even when she knew there was no chance
the issue would be resolved in her lifetime.

"I'm just sorry that New Jersey didn't act fast enough for her to see
something done," he said.