MARIJUANA RX MAY BE AN OPTION

Patients Deserve Its Relief

A bill sponsored by Del. Don Murphy, R-Baltimore County, and co- sponsored
by no fewer than 53 of his peers, sits in the House Judiciary Committee
after failing to pass twice previously. This bill, if passed, would
legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes. A version of the bill
passed the House last year, but was killed in a Senate committee.

This time, the bill was rewritten to address some of the concerns that
caused the bill to die before coming to a vote in the full Senate last
year. For example, while the previous version made a medical marijuana
user's identification card optional, this time the ID card is mandatory.
Under the latest version, the user could not grow marijuana outdoors, to
help prevent theft. Caregivers would not be allowed to serve multiple
patients, an effort to prevent a single caregiver to harvest large
quantities of the plant.

In case Murphy's bill doesn't pass muster, two other delegates have
sponsored their own versions of the medical marijuana bill. A second
version would allow a person arrested for medical marijuana use to use the
medicinal purposes as a legal defense in court. A third version takes the
opposite tactic by allowing a judge to consider medical use when sentencing
someone on a possession conviction.

Eight states allow medical use of marijuana for patients with such diseases
as AIDS or cancer. Supporters claim the drug does more than just ease pain
- -- it also is reported to relieve symptoms including nausea, appetite loss
and anxiety. A patient with Crohn's disease, an illness characterized by
severe gastrointestinal inflammation, reported in The (Baltimore) Sun that
smoking marijuana before and after eating is the only treatment that has
allowed him to live relatively free of the disorder's debilitating symptoms.

There are other issues. Would a person who has smoked marijuana for medical
purposes be too impaired to drive a motor vehicle? If so, how would that
possibility be addressed? The Maryland bill would in effect give people
with a prescription for medical marijuana a license to grow their own crop
of the plant for use as medication -- not exactly the same as a
prescription that is carried down to the corner drugstore to be filled by a
licensed pharmacist.

But until some of the other issues can be sorted out, it doesn't seem fair
or compassionate to deny to this treatment to those individuals who could
truly benefit from it. It would not be glorifying marijuana use or illegal
drug abuse to pass this measure in some form and make medical use of
marijuana legal for those who are most in need. Maybe this is the year to
pass Murphy's bill, or if not his, then one of the other two pieces of
legislation that would offer some relief to people who suffer symptoms that
could be alleviated by smoking marijuana.

(SIDEBAR)

IN SUMMATION

This might be the year for Maryland to pass a bill legalizing marijuana for
medical use by patients whose symptoms are only ease by this drug.