PERSONAL BECOMES POLITICAL FOR MARIJUANA-ISSUE ADVOCATE

Man With AIDS Backs Plan Allowing Patients To Use Drug With Doctor's OK

Luther Symons knows what it's like to live with nausea.

Since being diagnosed 15 years ago with AIDS, he has become well-
acquainted with faint and not-so-faint feelings of seasickness brought
on by his disease and the drugs he takes to control it.

The 38-year-old is expending some of his dwindling energy to support a
ballot initiative he believes will ease a chronically ill patient's
fears that what goes down will come up.

The "Medical Use of Marijuana" measure voters will see on the Nov. 7
ballot would allow Coloradans with certain serious medical conditions
to use marijuana with their doctor's approval. This is the second time
around for the Colorado initiative, which was put off two years ago
after legal disputes over petition signatures.

Symons says he smoked marijuana maybe five times in his younger,
wilder college days but never enjoyed it. But five years ago during his
worst bout yet with AIDS-related illness, Symons was so debilitated he
would have done almost anything to keep food down.

Symons considered smoking pot to quell his nausea, but didn't want to
put his friends or family at risk of arrest by purchasing the illegal
drug. So he fought his sickness, bite by bite, to stave off the illness
that eventually whittled his 6-foot-4-inch frame down to 120 pounds.

Eventually, after a bout in the hospital and a new regimen of drugs, he
has pulled his weight back up to 210 pounds.

But when he heard about the medical marijuana ballot proposal, it
struck a chord. He had watched many of his friends with AIDS die in the
1980s after starvation robbed their bodies of its defenses.

"When a doctor looks at you and says, 'You've got AIDS and the chances
aren't good,' you want as many treatment options as you can get," he
said. "Most people who haven't been through a life-threatening
experience don't understand the enormous desire to fight with
everything that's available. You never know what's going to work and
what won't."

Symons decided to use his personal experience both with the disease and
as a political consultant to become a spokesman for the campaign to get
the measure passed.

Symons does whatever he can, although side effects of the drugs he
takes force him to spend most mornings at home struggling with diarrhea
and nausea.

"If I have a morning where I feel good," he said, "it's sort of a bonus
day."

Symons believes he would have voted to legalize marijuana for medical
purposes even if he hadn't been diagnosed with AIDS. But he doubts he
would have volunteered full time for the campaign.

"It's because I've been through it," he said. "It can be a very lonely
thing, being very sick."