RUSH IS ON TO SEE POT PATIENTS

For a doctor who retired more than 10 years ago and has no office
hours, Dr. Phillip Leveque is seeing lots of patients these days.

Eighteen showed up Monday at a makeshift clinic in downtown Portland.
Sixteen more are scheduled for Wednesday. Another batch is expected
in Ashland next weekend, modeled after recent appearances in
Roseburg, Eugene, Clackamas and Happy Valley.

They have illnesses from arthritis to nausea to muscle spasms, but
all are in search of a single drug: cannabis, or marijuana, which is
legal for registered patients under Oregon's 3-year-old Medical
Marijuana Act.

And so they come to Leveque, a 78-year-old osteopath from Molalla who
has vouched for about 40 percent of the approved medical marijuana
cards in Oregon.

Leveque is under investigation by the Oregon Board of Medical
Examiners for alleged inattention to patients for whom he authorized
requests for medical marijuana. For example, he allegedly signed a
teen-ager's medical marijuana application without examining her,
diagnosing her condition or conferring with her other doctors.

In August, state health officials sent letters to nearly 900 patients
whose applications were signed by Leveque, asking for fuller
documentation of their need for medical marijuana, including written
evidence of a doctor-patient relationship.

Leveque had told state authorities he kept no detailed medical
records on the patients, beyond authorizations of their requests.
Most never saw him.

His patients must document their medical relationship with Leveque --
or another authorizing doctor -- by Jan. 15. Under new rules proposed
by the state, the authorizing doctor must review the patient's
medical record, examine the patient, specify a plan for follow-up
care and keep a written file.

"Basically, we're talking about establishing a bona fide
doctor-patient relationship," said Dr. Grant Higginson, Oregon's
public health officer. "I don't see how that can be done over the
phone."

So Leveque has gone back to work, frantically scheduling physical
exams on patients -- about 350 so far -- whose applications were put
on hold until they could comply with the new rules.

Monday's clinic was on the top floor of the Modish Building, built in
1907, on Southwest Park Avenue. Over the years, the building has
housed a coat factory, a theater, a church, an alternative health
center, artist studios -- and now Voter Power, an advocacy group that
favors medical marijuana.

Each of Monday's patients took the cramped, ancient elevator to the
fourth floor. A vast, high-ceilinged former church and soup kitchen
served as the waiting room, where patients sat quietly around
gleaming white lawn furniture tables.

"Who's next here?" shouted Leveque as he emerged from a back room.
His examining room had three folding chairs, a padded table,
fluorescent lighting, peeling paint, exposed pipes and painted-over
windows.

"I didn't get these 900 people into this," Leveque said. "But because
of me, they are in this mess. So it's my moral obligation to help
them as much as I can."

Patients such as Jack Dalton, 59, a disabled Vietnam veteran who uses
a wheelchair. As a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, Dalton said, he was
shot down seven times. He left Vietnam in 1967 with a fractured
skull, neck and back and spent 31 months in a Long Beach, Calif.,
hospital.

He is in severe chronic pain, with continual muscle spasms, as well
as hepatitis C and, as he put it, "a lot of unresolved issues." When
Leveque saw him Monday, Dalton could not bear getting out of his
wheelchair to the examining table.

Before he starting using marijuana eight years ago, Dalton said, he
averaged 420 milligrams of morphine a day, plus other painkillers.
Now he is down to 60 milligrams of morphine a day.

"I just smoke the hell out of herb," Dalton said.

The state offered to return the $150 application fee to patients who
withdrew their applications, refused to release their medical records
or failed to submit new documentation by Jan. 15.

So far, about 75 patients have withdrawn applications and asked for
refunds, said Chris Campbell, acting manager of the medical marijuana
program. Another 40 have received cards, based on submission of new
documentation through Leveque. About 60 got their cards after
switching to another doctor. Nearly 200 other reapplications signed
by Leveque are pending.

Nearly 2,000 Oregonians, from 34 of the state's 36 counties, have
cards allowing them to grow and use marijuana for medical purposes.

Each application requires a doctor's signature to verify that the
patient has a "debilitating medical condition" such as cancer,
glaucoma, AIDS or severe pain.

"I don't approve their use of marijuana," Leveque said. "I just say
they could benefit from using it."