MEDICAL MARIJUANA GETS NEW SUPPORTER

Howard Horse Farmer With Cancer Says Drug Should Be Available

Darrell Putman wants everyone to know he is not a worn-out
hippie.

He was a Green Beret. He's a registered Republican and a prosperous
western Howard County horse farm owner. And he has never owned a
tie-dyed shirt. Putman, 49, explains all this while sitting on the
couch in his living room and tugging on the tubes attached to his arm.

It's important that people know his past, his love of his country and
his conservative political views. Otherwise, they will probably
dismiss his proposal, which has gained the support of the Howard
County Farm Bureau as well as a Republican state legislator, to
decriminalize marijuana for medical purposes.

"Baby boomers, those are the people who I want to reach," he says.
"These are the people who must think I am something left over from the
'60s. Some draft card-burning, flag-burning hippie."

Putman, a retired lieutenant colonel with the Army Reserve and father
of two young girls, is fighting cancer. If he survives, he will give
some credit to the marijuana he smokes illegally.

About a year ago, Putman was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
After the second round of chemotherapy treatment, which made him
nauseous and weak, his weight started to drop. By August, he had lost
43 pounds and weighed 152 pounds.

Putman and his doctor were worried -- he was scheduled in October to
have a grueling treatment called stem-cell transplant that could save
his life. But he couldn't have the treatment unless he gained some
weight. And the mere sight of food made him want to vomit.

A friend visiting Putman on his 117-acre farm in Lisbon, Sundance
Equestrian Center, had an idea.

"He could see how I looked and that I couldn't eat," Putman says. "He
asked me if I would like to smoke some marijuana, and I said, `Hell,
yes.' "

Made Him Hungry

Putman acknowledges he smoked marijuana while he was in Vietnam, but
it wasn't a habit he continued back home. He remembered how it made
him hungry then. He hoped it would now.

It didn't right away. But little by little, he did start to eat --
some Jell-O, a cinnamon bun, even a pork chop. That was in August. By
October, when he was to have the stem cell transplant, he had gained
21 pounds.

"I told my doctor that I smoked marijuana, and his words were to do
whatever it took to eat," he says.

In September, Putman, who sits on the board of directors of the Howard
County Farm Bureau, asked the bureau to endorse the idea of legalizing
the drug for use in medical cases.

"You should have seen the looks on the faces around the table," he
said. "But I want doctors to be able to decide what my treatment
should be. Not politicians who haven't gone to medical school."

In a voice vote a few weeks later, the board of directors agreed to
support decriminalizing marijuana for medical purposes and took the
idea to the Maryland Farm Bureau. Although it agreed to discuss the
topic in coming years, the state group declined to lobby for a bill.

"We all felt that there was concern" for Putman and others who are
sick, said Charles C. Feaga, president of the county Farm Bureau and a
member of the state Farm Bureau board of directors.

"But the downside was that we are afraid to promote something that is
illegal," he said. "The Farm Bureau is very tough on drugs. We worried
about how it could be supervised and how it could be controlled."

Del. Donald E. Murphy, a Republican who represents Baltimore
County and part of Howard County, heard of Putman's problem and has
agreed to introduce a bill.

Murphy said he has pursued the issue informally in the past, but this
year he hopes to gain some support for it. He thinks there are many
people in Maryland like Putman who are suffering needlessly. If it
would help someone in his family, he wouldn't hesitate to grow it
himself, he said.

"I want to do something so that these people would be left alone, and
they would not have to go through the arrest process," Murphy said.

First Hurdle

Six states -- Alaska, Arizona, California, Maine, Oregon
and Washington -- have legalized the drug for medical purposes. Chuck
Thomas of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C., said that
to gain the support of law enforcement officials, any legislation
should remove the criminal penalty for using and growing marijuana and
provide a way that users can prove they are ill when police arrive at
their doors. It also ought to have a provision protecting caregivers
who might be bringing a patient the drug, he said.

While the first hurdle is local law enforcement, Thomas said, the real
problem is federal law.

"Traditionally, no matter what the state law is, federal law makes
possessing even one marijuana cigarette illegal," Thomas said. "But
the good news is that the federal government doesn't have the
resources to go after these people."

Charles Tomaszewski, a spokesman at the Baltimore field office of the
Drug Enforcement Administration, said that while they don't condone
any use of the drug, DEA agents focus beyond the low-level users.

"Our mission is to be looking at major, major traffickers," he said.
"Not the small-time users. That is local law enforcement's
responsibility."

Howard County police Chief Wayne Livesay said he is not opposed to the
idea of decriminalizing marijuana for the terminally ill, but he does
have concerns about how users would be identified and regulated.

"The issue is how to control it so that it is not abused," he
said.

Worked 16 Hours a Day

That is comforting to Putman, who goes outside his home to smoke the
drug two or three times a week. He keeps it away from his daughters,
ages 4 and 8. They know he's sick, he said, but know nothing about his
marijuana use.

The days are long for the man who has spent most of his
time working hard and living an idyllic life on a farm with his wife, Shay
Murphy, and daughters. A year ago, he was up at dawn plowing fields and looking after the 65 horses on the farm.

"During the summer, I'd work until I ran out of daylight,"
he said. "Imagine: I used to work 16 hours a day; now I need to sleep
16 hours a day. I hate it."

After the stem-cell replacement, he lost 13 pounds and is trying to
regain it before his chemotherapy starts again in January. He may need
another stem-cell procedure, his doctors say. He has tubes in his arm
for intravenous medication. He is unsure of his prognosis.

"The doctors talk to me in terms of the probability of me living a
certain amount of years," he said. "Since I had the stem-cell
treatment, I have a 50-50 chance of living another seven years."