REVISIT N.M. LAW ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Imagine being nauseated -- not for several days with a flu bug, but
nauseated for weeks. What would you do to make it stop? Vernon Jackman
doesn't have to imagine.

The 59-year-old Taos electrician vividly recalls endless waves of
nausea induced by chemotherapy. Jackman told the Governor's Drug
Policy Advisory Group last week that he was unable to eat or drink
much for two months and lost 50 pounds. "I was ready to try anything."

Anything ended up including a substance proscribed by law: Marijuana.
After eating two marijuana-fortified cookies brought to him by
friends, Jackman rediscovered an appetite for food and an appetite for
life. "It made a difference overnight," he said. "For the first time,
I was hungry. I could eat and not throw up. For the first time, I had
a glimmer of hope." Back to the future. Similar advocacy from an
eloquent cancer patient named Lynn Pierson led to passage in 1978 of
legislation acknowledging marijuana's potential to ease the ordeal of
chemotherapy. The law permitted such uses, but only within the
legitimizing context of a research project.

Because of that, the Lynn Pierson Act has become ineffective and
should be repealed, Health Secretary Alex Valdez told his colleagues
on the drug policy panel.

More than 150 research subjects participated under the act until 1986,
when the Legislature yanked its annual appropriation. Efforts by
Valdez to revive the program encountered a distinct lack of interest
by potential researchers.

What Valdez proposes to supplant the Lynn Pierson Act would be
patterned after new Hawaii law. In that state, people with a
qualifying condition can legally possess up to three mature marijuana
plants, four immature plants and one ounce of marijuana for each
mature plant. After hearing Jackman's testimony, Nick Bakas,
Department of Public Safety secretary and a panel member, said: "The
last thing he should worry about in his cancer state is that a police
officer is going to take him to jail for marijuana. We have a full
plate dealing with people who injure ... and prey on other human
beings. That's who we need to concentrate on." And those who make
policy on medical marijuana use can concentrate on people whose
suffering now compels them to violate the law.