THE POT PRESCRIPTION

For more than a decade, Mark Tucci has been perfecting the art of
suffering. And before his journey is over, he is bound to become a
master. But despite his body being wracked with uncontrollable
spasms, a feeling like his legs are being electrocuted and arms that
don't react to his thoughts no matter how hard he concentrates,
Tucci, of Manchester, does not cry for his own suffering. Tucci, 49,
does, however, weep when he thinks about the suffering of others,
like when he thinks about dear friends who struggled through
their last hours on a hospital bed, contorted, and their
"medication" - only a breath away - blocked from ever reaching them
by the government.

It is for his fellow suffering human beings that
Tucci has written "The Patient's Simple Guide to Growing Marijuana,"
a simple 31-page booklet for people like him, who are in the throes
of a debilitating illness such as multiple sclerosis (which Tucci
has), advanced HIV/AIDS and cancer. Tucci, at regular intervals
throughout an interview with the Banner in late July, puffed on a
hand-blown glass pipe and a marijuana cigarette. The smoked
substance was marijuana: a drug that the state of Vermont not only
allows him to smoke, but also permits it to be grown for him at
a secure, undisclosed location. When smoked, marijuana eases Tucci's
pain, he said, and also restores his hunger after his appetite is
killed from a number of medications he takes. Tucci is not alone.

There are 29 people licensed to possess and grow small amounts or
marijuana in Vermont, and there are also five licensed caregivers,
who go through a criminal background check and grow solely for sick
friends, clients or family. To get a license in Vermont, sick
individuals must apply online, fill out a registry form, have a
physician's confirmation and send in two self-portraits, Tucci said.
If denied, the applicant can go before a three person panel for
review and reconsideration. With the passage of bill S.76 in 2004,
Vermonters with AIDS, or the health equivalent of AIDS, cancer and
MS are permitted to grow one mature marijuana plant, two immature
plants and to possess two ounces of the cured product. Possessing
more than this amount can put the individual at risk of being
arrested.

Tucci has been taking all kinds of prescribed drugs since
he first became ill with MS in 1994. After years of taking
medications, he has found that marijuana eases his symptoms more
than most. MS is a disease that attacks the sheath on nerve endings,
and when those sheaths are destroyed, it sends mixed signals to the
brain, causing blindness, paralysis, muscle weakness, tremors and
spasms.

"Basically, it's your nervous system attacking itself," said
Tucci. Tucci said the result is pain, and lots of it. "I've got pain.
Like five different kinds of pain," Tucci said. "When you have the
flu, and the body ache pains and stuff like that, I get that all the
time. My legs feel like someone beat on them, I'm on an
electric fence, and my feet are burning at the same time. And I have
spasms, a lot of spasticity in different parts of the day, but
mostly in the morning. Obviously, I don't walk and run like I used
to."

As a result of the MS and restricted movement, Tucci's muscles
have atrophied, and he walks with the deftness of a drunkard.

His spasticity, as he calls it, is so bad that his torso and legs
can contract in the middle of the night to the point when they'll
almost touch. His mind, though, is fine. That wasn't always the case.
"I'm much more aware than when I was on narcotics and things
like that," he said. Narcotic pills, of which Tucci was given a
laundry list by doctors to take daily, suppressed his immune system.

It was a counterproductive treatment, Tucci said, that did more harm
than good. Marijuana, on the other hand, helped Tucci more than most
of the pharmaceutical drugs combined, he said. Further, he didn't
build a tolerance to the drug, unlike other narcotic medications.

It's the phenomenon of "reverse tolerance," Tucci said. "You take
any drug - alcohol, cigarettes, synthetic drugs of any kind, and you
start doing it, and you will have to at some point do more to
maintain the same high, to get the same happiness out of it. You talk
to any old hippie, any old pothead, any sick person puffing weed for
20 years, they still just have to take a few hits. Isn't that amazing?

No matter how bad things are in my pain spasm world, I don't have to
juice up with four joints in the morning. It's been the only drug -
this and the Neurotin - that have maintained their usefulness that I
haven't built up a tolerance to. What a blessing that is? Holy crap,
let me tell you." Tucci was no stranger to marijuana before his MS
took hold. He grew up in Danby in the 1960s and '70s, he explained.

Back then, he used pot recreationally. Whereas Tucci smoked only
occasionally 30 years ago, now it's daily.

He smokes about four joints a day, sometimes even in the middle of
the night to ease the wild contractions of his body. "It keeps it at
bay and knocks the spasms out," he said. "It helps you eat, and it
helps your attitude and helps you through the periods when you feel
like crap." In writing his book, Tucci hoped to take the glamour and
the mystery out of growing marijuana. Tucci believes there are many
more who could reap its medicinal benefits. Tucci said that other
people who are suffering - such as those with Krohn's disease,
fibromyalgia and other auto-immune illness - should be allowed by
the state to use medical marijuana. He said his book is for these people, and for people who just don't understand what marijuana is about.

"It tells you how to grow in the
simplest terms in accordance with Vermont law," Tucci said. His
target audience is sick people in the 11 states where medical
marijuana has been legalized to an extent, such as Maine, Rhode
Island and Vermont.

Kerry Sleeper is the state's commissioner of the
Department of Public Safety, the branch of government responsible for
the oversight of both Vermont's legal and illegal pot users. He said
the law was drafted in such a way to prevent abuse by people seeking
the ability to grow and sell marijuana for profit by focusing
narrowly on the very ill people who make use of it.

"In the sense of law that was passed, I don't believe that there's any significant
abuse of it," Sleeper said in an interview Wednesday. However,
Sleeper said the drug grown for people like Tucci is not "medical
marijuana," but rather a drug permitted for "compassionate use" by
the state. He said there is no concrete evidence that marijuana
has medicinal benefits, but that it does seem to provide some kind
of solace for people dealing with end-of-life issues and long-term,
debilitating illness.

The intent of the law then, according to
Sleeper, was to permit the use of marijuana for only this group of
people. Sleeper said he would advocate against any kind of expansion
of S.76, as it would be counter-productive to the efforts the state
and his department are making in a long-standing battle against
substance abuse, especially with Vermont's youth.

"We can't be hypocrites and recognize that we have a substance abuse problem and
then advocate marijuana use," said Sleeper, a former state trooper
and former head of the Vermont Drug Task Force with nearly 30 years
of law enforcement under his belt. Further, Sleeper believes the same
groups of people who advocate for expansion of medical marijuana laws
are often working for the same organizations that promote total
marijuana legalization.

S.76 passed in 2004, with the help of people
like state Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington/Wilmington, a legislator
who has always been a strong proponent of law enforcement. Sears
said Wednesday that the next legislative session would be a
good time to review how S.76 has worked so far, and to expand and
overhaul the scope of the law. Sears, chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, said he believes the law should be expanded to
include people who suffer from diseases like Krohn's and
fibromyalgia, despite Sleeper's recommendation to do otherwise. Sears
would also like to see the law shift the oversight from
the Department of Public Safety to the Department of Health.

"It clearly to me is a health issue," Sears said. But Sears said he is
far from approving the uncontrolled growing of marijuana throughout the state.

For him, the marijuana grown and used by people dealing with
impending death or severe pain and discomfort still needs to be
regulated.

"Like any prescription drug, if you abuse it, you ought to
be held accountable for that," Sears said. "It's the obligation of
the user to use it responsibly."

The rules regarding how much a sick
person or caregiver could grow would also change if Sears has his
way. He acknowledges, just as Tucci does, that one mature plant and
two ounces of cured marijuana does not give people what they need to
manage their illnesses successfully. He said the original Senate
version of the bill provided more leeway than the current law, and
that's a direction he'd like the state to move. However, Sears said
he wasn't always a believer in marijuana use. That changed after he
heard from the family members of those dying from cancer and from
people like Tucci.

"The most dramatic thing for me was the
testimony," Sears said, who led the committee that oversaw the birth
of the bill in the Senate. "When you hear the testimony, you really
get a feel for what these folks are going through.

If people could hear more of Mark's story, and more people like him,
they'd be convinced." Before recently retiring, Sears ran 204 Depot
Street, a half-way house for delinquent youth aged 14 to 18. He
knows all too well the dangers of drugs and alcohol, he said.

"I'm certainly not one to want to legalize drugs," Sears said. "It's just
that I think we have a substance (in marijuana) that many people
find relief from." With some expected resistance to the expansion of
the law, Tucci still advocates for the sick and those who cannot
advocate for themselves. His book, he said, is for them.

"Someone in every state knows someone who is sick, someone who can be helped by
this," Tucci said. "So if you live in a state like Illinois or
Connecticut, that's had legislation introduced for three or four
years now, even though it's not legal, buy my book and become an
activist and write a little letter to your (legislator). Call
someone and say, 'Hey, this does help this person.' It's meant for
that."

Tucci's book is available online at - -www.patientssimpleguide.com- (http://www.patientssimpleguide.com/) and sells for $10.50.