CONSERVATIVE PUSH FOR POT

In Md., Medical Marijuana Has Unlikely Advocate

It's hard to picture a more appealing symbol for the medical marijuana
movement than Darrell Putman. A Republican father of two, a former Green
Beret and an official of the Howard County Farm Bureau, Putman found that
smoking the illegal drug eased the nausea he felt after chemotherapy.

Upon hearing the 49-year-old war veteran's story, an equally unlikely
character took up his cause: Del. Donald E. Murphy (Baltimore County), a
self-described "law-and-order Republican who is pro-life, pro-gun, against
the big trial lawyer stuff, union stuff, all that."

Now, Murphy has introduced a bill in the Maryland legislature that would
legalize marijuana for medical reasons, and he finds himself in the media
spotlight for the first time in his low-key Annapolis career--mocked by
snickering colleagues (who refer to him and a co-sponsor as "the Doobie
Brothers") and lobbied by the office of Barry R. McCaffrey, the White House
drug control policy director, which has urged him to drop the bill.

Still, the slings and arrows don't bother Murphy, who has developed into a
passionate advocate, ready to push ahead with his long-shot legislation,
scheduled for a hearing this week.

If Murphy's bill wins Judiciary Committee approval, which even some
committee opponents say is possible, it would be the farthest anyone in
Annapolis remembers such a measure getting. Similar bills are pending in
eight states.

"My only regret is, I lost my star witness," he said, referring to Putman's
death in December of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. "I'm convinced, if Lieutenant
Colonel Putman was here to walk the halls in Annapolis, we'd have 141
co-sponsors and there wouldn't be any debate."

Putman may be gone, but others have stepped up to publicly support the bill
he inspired--people like Patricia Skidmore, a registered nurse from
Frederick County who says marijuana was the only thing that made her son's
final days bearable, before he died of AIDS in 1993.

" 'If this helps you,' I told him, 'I will get it for you,' and I
did--putting us both at a huge legal risk," said Skidmore, of New Market.
"But I did what any mother would do. My son was suffering."

Yet, even armed with compelling stories like Putman's and Skidmore's and
with his own newfound fervor, Murphy is finding out just how much
resistance there is to relaxing marijuana laws. Debated for three decades
in this country, the subject still presses a plethora of emotional
buttons--with cancer survivors, the AIDS community and anti-drug advocates.
Even those who are sympathetic with the concept worry that permitting
marijuana for medical reasons could encourage abuse and lead to full
legalization.

"The devil is in the details, and I see a myriad of problems with this,"
said Del. Thomas E. Dewberry (D-Baltimore County).

"Where will they get the marijuana? Would they grow it in back yards? You
got children running through those yards," said Dewberry, who is speaker
pro tem. "The obvious fear is that this is a gateway drug, and if you start
down this road, does it end with full legalization?"

Still, opinion polls suggest there is considerable support for limited,
medical use of marijuana. The University of Maryland recently surveyed
1,000 Maryland voters and found that 73 percent favor medical marijuana.
Vice President Gore recently signaled that he would depart from the Clinton
administration's position and favor relaxing restrictions for compassionate
use.

The provisions of Murphy's bill resemble those of the medical marijuana
initiatives passed in five states (Alaska, California, Oregon, Maine and
Washington) and the District of Columbia. (The D.C. measure was approved by
69 percent of voters, but Congress has prevented it from going into effect.)

Mark Dion, sheriff of Cumberland County, Maine, said the measure approved
by Maine voters in a referendum last year has not resulted in any
fraudulent claims of medical need by people possessing marijuana. But many
Maine law enforcement officials are complaining that the new law is too
vague in identifying who qualifies and where they can get the drug, Dion
said. In Alaska and Oregon, medical users are given special identification
cards to show to police.

The Maryland measure, which Murphy is calling the Darrell Putman
Compassionate Use Bill, would allow people with specific medical conditions
to possess marijuana with a doctor's "recommendation." (Federal law
prohibits physicians from prescribing the controlled substance.) Patients
are on their own as far as getting the illegal drug. Among the conditions
covered by the bill are cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, epileptic seizures and
multiple sclerosis.

Advocates argue that marijuana has been recognized for centuries as helpful
in alleviating pain and reducing nausea and that it ought to be made
available under doctors' supervision. They got a boost last year with the
release of a report by the Institute of Medicine, part of the government's
National Academy of Science, which concluded that marijuana-derived
chemicals can alleviate symptoms of cancer and AIDS.

The report said these chemicals would be best delivered in a non-smoke
form, like the pill Marinol, which contains the psychoactive substance in
marijuana and is now available in the United States by prescription. The
study also urged the government to create compassionate use programs for
patients with long-term needs.

Administration officials have continued to oppose medical marijuana, saying
that there has not been definitive research to prove its efficacy and that
smoked marijuana has harmful respiratory and other effects, like those of
smoked tobacco. Advocates argue that smoked marijuana has fewer side
effects than many prescription drugs and is the only pain relief that works
for some people. They also note that nauseous patients cannot keep down the
pill form of marijuana ingredients.

By the time Sean Donnelly turned to marijuana to get through his
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, he was feeling so sick and miserable he could
barely eat a thing. The danger of a drug arrest paled in comparison.

"Your hair's gone--all your hair, even your eyebrows--you're nauseous, the
chemo drugs taste horrible, you smell horrible, you're weak and exhausted
and you just feel like you're dying," said Donnelly, 30, a Howard County
electrician whose lymphoma was diagnosed in 1998.

Soon after his first puff of marijuana, Donnelly recalled in a phone
interview recently, he ate half a pizza, two pieces of cheesecake and
several Little Debbie snack cakes.

"You can eat the food your wife made. You can sleep. You have that feeling
everything's going to be all right," he said, happy to report that the
disease appears now to be in remission. "I'd be lying to you if I said you
didn't get a little buzz. Is somebody cruel enough to say that's bad?"

Putman also was unable to hold down food--if he felt like eating at all,
Murphy recalled.

"Putman couldn't eat, he had no appetite and he would throw up if he tried.
What good was a pill going to do him?" Murphy said.

At a time when others were protesting the U.S. war in Southeast Asia, the
17-year-old Darrell Putman, born and raised in Frederick County, was
volunteering to fight it. He joined the Army and served as an intelligence
officer in Vietnam with the Green Berets and, after 20 years, transferred
to the Maryland Army National Guard. In 1998, he retired to run the Lisbon
horse farm he and his wife purchased eight years earlier.

Along the way, Putman studied accounting, received a law degree from the
University of Baltimore and operated a horse-drawn carriage company that
offered tours of downtown Frederick.

His brother, Wayne E. Putman, recalls how thin and haggard his brother was
becoming with the cancer that was diagnosed in 1998. The chemotherapy
treatments were leaving him too nauseous to eat. "He went from looking like
he was 49," Putman said, "to looking like he was 89."

"All he had to do was smell food and he'd feel like throwing up," said
Putman, of Frederick. "Then one day I called him and he was sounding great.
He said, 'You won't believe it--I'm eating like a horse!' "

The reason? Marijuana. Putman had decided to try it, remembering how the
drug--which he tried in Vietnam--induced "the munchies," his brother said.
Darrell Putman regained about half the 40 pounds he'd lost during
chemotherapy, he said.

Army friends from Putman's active and reserves days rallied to help him
with his farm and drive him to and from chemotherapy in Baltimore. One of
them recalled how upset Putman was that the treatment that gave him relief
was illegal.

"They could arrest him and confiscate his farm and take away his kids, and
all he wanted to do is save his life," said Bill Hanrahan, 47, of Ellicott
City. "They made my good friend a criminal."

Putman needed to eat, to build up his strength, to be able to withstand the
demanding stem-cell replacement therapy that doctors believed offered him
his only hope of recovery, said Hanrahan, a computer systems engineer who
served with Putman 20 years ago in the Army's Special Forces division.

Deciding that he ought to push state lawmakers to legalize marijuana for
medical relief, Putman won support for the idea from an unlikely group--his
fellow members of the Board of Directors of the county Farm Bureau.
Delegate Murphy heard about Putman from one of those board members--Gail
Bates, his aide in Annapolis. Bates introduced Murphy to Putman.

"I agreed to sponsor a bill if, to be honest, Putman would come to
Annapolis and speak on it, carry the thing," Murphy said. Then Putman,
despite the stem-cell replacements, died. And then the issue started to tug
at Murphy's libertarian side. Haunted by his own father's cancer death, he
was one of the few vocal opponents of the assisted suicide ban passed last
year.

"And I said to myself, 'What's the government doing interfering in the
relationship between doctors and patients?' " he said. "We demagogue all
the time down here about how terrible it is to have HMO directors dictating
what medical procedures people can have. And here the state is doing it."

It's just one of many arguments that Murphy poses confidently, just as he
slings out phrases like tetra-hydro-cannabinol, the active ingredient in
marijuana.

"Look at me now," he said. "Four months ago, I could barely spell
marijuana."