TOKIN' GESTURES

A Year After Oregon's Medical-Marijuana Law Went Into Effect, The Visions
Of A Law-Enforcement Nightmare Seem To Have Gone Up In Smoke.

Last week No. 1 and No. 500 went to a show at Harvey's Comedy Club. It was
500's idea--she'd gotten a bunch of tickets and invited her friends along.
Nos. 257, 258 and 498 were there, too, laughing heartily when comic Ron
Osborne poked fun at the idiosyncrasies of stoners.

As the evening wore on, however, No. 500--otherwise known as Madeline
Martinez--shifted in her chair, struggling against the pain that plagues
her from degenerative disk disease. She wondered whether she and No.
1--Jeanelle Bluhm--would have a chance to go out to Bluhm's van to light up
a bowl and self-medicate. But she wasn't sure it was kosher.

"I'm so new to all of this," she says.

On Nov. 10, Martinez, a 48-year-old former prison guard, became the 500th
person to receive official permission from the state to break federal drug
laws and use or grow marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Her story illustrates the huge gap between what was predicted about Measure
67 and what turned out to be the reality, as well as how patients and
doctors are working their way through the new law.

A year after Measure 67 went into effect, the anticipated evils of Oregon's
medical-marijuana law are certainly not evident.

During the 1998 campaign, opponents claimed that pot dealers would use the
law as a means to legitimize their illicit ways. Cops would be forced to
make judgments on who was a real patient and who an impostor. There would
be a few notorious "pot doctors" who would, with a wink and a nudge,
recommend marijuana to "patients." People would mock law enforcement,
openly smoking marijuana on the streets. Children would see this example
and begin the steep descent into the bowels of drug addiction.

One of the most outspoken opponents of the law was Multnomah County Sheriff
Dan Noelle. While he notes that the cards have been available only six
months, he concedes that so far things are going well.

"We assumed we would see a lot of abuses...and we could all jump up and say
'nyah, nyah,'" he says. "We haven't seen it."

Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schrunk, who didn't oppose the
measure, agrees that from a law-enforcement perspective, the measure's
proponents were right.

"The rhetoric in the campaign was that only the really sick would use it,"
he says. "It would seem Oregonians are acting responsibly."

The state of Oregon began issuing registration cards on May 1 of this year.
As of mid-November, the number issued stood at 530, and Kelly Paige, who
heads the medical-marijuana program, receives several new applications per
day. Three hundred and eighteen of the cards are for patients, including
one 16-year-old with cancer. The rest are for "caregivers," people
sanctioned to grow marijuana for others. "We didn't know if doctors would
be reluctant to turn over information or if some of the things law
enforcement was worried about would happen," says Paige, whose office was
created to administer the new program. "Everything's going so much better
than we thought it would."

Since the law passed, a network of patients has created an active support
system where veteran pot activists welcome neophytes like Martinez into the
fold. Grow rooms are sprouting up in the basements and spare bedrooms of
homes across the state. The Oregon Medical Association has issued
guidelines for physicians who don't want to stand in the way of their
patients who want to use marijuana, and more than 225 doctors have given
the green light.

"It's been an astronomical year," Bluhm says.

It's not perfect, though. Some patients are put off by the annual $150 fee
to get a card. Others cannot find a doctor willing to sign off.

Martinez had her share of obstacles.

She began using medical marijuana last year to control the pain that seizes
her back and shoots down her legs. An open-faced woman whose warm smile
comes easily, she says the physical demands of being a state corrections
officer in Frontera, Calif., left her with a permanent disability. After
seven years on the job, she left with a full pension in 1995 and moved to
Oregon.

Before she started using marijuana, she says, she was on 2,400 milligrams
of Motrin every day, which tore up her stomach. When the pain got too
intense to bear, she would take 10 milligrams of Flexril, a muscle relaxant
with the nickname "Gumby drug," because it makes patients' limbs feel
rubbery. Good for pain. Bad for doing anything other than staying in bed.

To Martinez, that's a day lost. She has four grandchildren and a
70-year-old mother who need her attention. So she tried marijuana. She
smokes two to three bowls a day, which keeps her pain in check without
knocking her out. While she still occasionally turns to the
pharmaceuticals, it's rare.

The self-medication was effective, but it had a nasty side-effect: fear.

She was mortified at breaking the law, so much so that she would smoke only
in her Milwaukie bedroom with the blinds and door closed. Her anxiety
infected her entire family, from her husband, Rafael, to her two
twentysomething children. And even though she knew it was unlikely she
would get busted for the 1/8-ounce bags she bought through the black
market, the messages from the drug war rang in her head.

"I felt like I was one of the people I locked up. Other than my job, I'd
never been near a jail," she says. "And I couldn't have my grandchildren
over because I didn't want to jeopardize them if something should happen."

Measure 67 brought Martinez hope, but not immediate relief. Like many
people, she knew nothing about how the law worked or how to get started
growing her own supply. She contacted the Oregon Health Division, and Paige
helped her with the law.

It was Stormy Ray, a legendary figure in medical marijuana circles, who
helped her with the rest. Ray is a multiple sclerosis patient from Ontario
and was one of the chief petitioners on Measure 67. She is the hearthstone
of the patient network and runs the medical-marijuana hotline. She is adept
at calming patients' fears and easing them into the system.

After talking to Ray, Martinez and her husband went last summer to the
Eugene Hempfest, where Ray was working in a booth.

"I just had to meet this woman face to face," Martinez says. "I was so
moved by her."

Neither Martinez nor her husband had ever experienced anything like the
hempfest.

"We went into culture shock," Martinez says. "We looked so straight and
narrow--we stuck out like a couple of narcs." While the tie-die, drumming
and naked dancers were shocking to her, she says, she was driven by her
belief in the healing properties of the herb. After meeting Ray, she
entered into a tight circle of patients and growers with the expertise to
teach her how to grow her own supply.

Once she was armed with knowledge, however, Martinez still needed a stamp
of approval from a doctor. She had to go through three different Kaiser
doctors before she found one who would agree to sign the note the Oregon
Health Department needed to get her a card.

Today, Martinez and her husband are making plans to start their first grow.
It costs between $1,000 and $2,000 to buy the lights and ventilation
systems necessary to grow the seven plants legally allowed to patients. She
says she and Rafael--who, as her caregiver, also has a card--plan to start
growing by the end of November and hope to have a harvest by their 30th
anniversary in February.

"It's like preparing for a new baby," she says, "like we're getting the
nursery ready."

In spite of difficulties in finding sympathetic doctors and the challenge
of getting supply, most parties agree that implementation of the
medical-marijuana law is going smoothly. For her part, Martinez has begun
to spread the word about medical marijuana with the evangelical zeal of a
true convert. "It's time for patients to come out of the closet and not be
afraid," she says.

Just What Did the Doctor Order: how Measure 67 works by legal and semantic
loopholes.

With everyone celebrating the success of Oregon's year-old
medical-marijuana law, it's easy to forget that using pot for any reason is
still illegal under federal law. Measure 67 is working only because the
feds are looking the other way. Last year, the Oregon Medical Association
sent a letter to the Department of Justice asking whether the federal
agency would come after doctors. It still has not received a response.

To keep doctors from being arrested for pushing an illegal substance,
Oregon health officials engaged in a linguistic dance.

Doctors cannot write out a prescription for medical marijuana or even
recommend that it might help.

Instead, they must simply state that the patient has a symptom covered
under the medical-marijuana law. As an indicator of how normalized medical
marijuana is quickly becoming in Oregon, both the Health Division and
Kaiser Permanente have come up with forms for physicians to use. The Kaiser
form says, "The patient has demonstrated inadequate or unsatisfactory
symptom relief from other forms of therapy and has expressed a desire to
try marijuana for medical purposes."

Other doctors can obtain a similar form from the state health department or
simply write a note to the same effect.

According to Jim Kronenberg of the OMA, "It's semantical, but if it gets
doctors and patients what they want and keeps them out of trouble, that's
fine." (PW)