MEDICAL MARIJUANA QUESTION GETS A BOOST

Mainers for Medical Rights is gaining support for its effort to legalize
marijuana for medical purposes.

On the heels of an endorsement from Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion, the
organization reports that more than 175 health care professionals throughout
the state, including 10 from the Mid-coast area, have teamed up to show
their support for the referendum.

One of them, Elly Cary of Harpswell, a registered home health nurse, will
appear in a new television commercial that begins its broadcasting schedule
today, according to Craig Brown, campaign director for the Mainers for
Medical Rights, which is backing the measure known as Question 2 on the Nov.
2 ballot.

"My patients are often terminally ill, in the very last stages of cancer,"
Cary says in the commercial. "Marijuana would ease the suffering of some of
them. I know it works ... Heaven forbid, someday someone you love may need it."

Cary was not available for comment this morning.

In the other of two new television advertisements that will hit the air
today, Dr. Richard Baldwin of South Gardiner contends that the severe nausea
and vomiting, common side effects suffered by chemotherapy patients, often
are not solved by available medications.

"Fortunately, there is a medicine that can help. It's marijuana," says
Baldwin in the commercial. "We want to be able to offer you every medicine
that helps."

"These are both strong supporters who made a special offer to do whatever
they could to help," Brown said this morning of Cary and Baldwin. "So we
asked if they were willing to say it on TV."

"Maine health care workers who are on the front line in caring for
chemotherapy and AIDS patients know that marijuana can ease their
suffering," said clinical social worker Elizabeth Beane, a Gorham resident
who is a member of Mainers for Medical Rights. "I'm so proud that so many of
them are courageous enough to stand up for their patients."

Brown said that the support was solicited by his group in a variety of ways,
including those who approached the booth at the recent Maine Medical
Association Convention and at the Common Ground Fair.

If passed, the referendum question would authorize "an individual suffering
from debilitating conditions to be able to treat the illness or its side
effects with the use of marijuana," according to the referendum's statement
of intent and content.

"In order for the patient to be eligible to use the marijuana, the patient's
physician would have to determine that the patient might benefit from
marijuana use," it continues.

"A patient with physician authorization will not be able to possess any
amount greater than 1 1/4 ounces of harvested marijuana and six marijuana
plants, of which no more than three may be mature, flowering plants. A
patient under 18 years of age will have to obtain parental consent for such
use."

The statement goes on to say that the act would go into effect 30 days after
the proclamation of the vote.