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repealed, Health Secretary Alex Valdez told his colleagues on the drug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.