MARIJUANA RX?

The first gifts arrived during Darla Whitney's darkest hour - when the
chemotherapy left her so sick, she was praying to God for a fatal heart
attack.

The tiny packages came from friends at work, handed to her husband, Scott,
as he headed home to his cancer-stricken wife. They were wrapped in pretty
paper. They had "Get well Darla'' notes.

They were stuffed with marijuana.

"I never solicited it. I never asked for it. But I smoked it. And in maybe
15 minutes, I started feeling OK,'' says Whitney, 43 and the very picture
of a suburban mom, with a house in Highlands Ranch and son who was a
national debating champ.

"It let me eat. It took my mind off my ordeal. It relaxed me enough to let
my chemotherapy do its job.''

A cancer-fighting ritual was born. On Thursday afternoons, two hours after
a chemo drip left her throat sore, her ears ringing and her stomach queasy,
Whitney would sit in her home, light a joint and inhale some of that gift-
wrapped grass.

Over the summer, her frail body slowly rallied. But in beating breast
cancer she says she was forced to break the law.

"If we can help ourselves by taking marijuana to feel good and to quit
throwing up, then why not?'' Whitney says. "Then we might get cured.''

She has since lent her voice to a fast-growing movement, one that wants to
legalize marijuana for medical use in Colorado.

Led by another cancer survivor, Martin Chilcutt, and fueled by California
cash, a group called Coloradans for Medical Rights pushed pot onto the Nov.
3 ballot with Amendment 19.

Ultimately, Secretary of State Vikki Buckley ruled that backers hadn't
collected enough valid signatures. As this story went to press last week,
the measure remained on the ballot but any votes it garners won't count.

Yet the fight for medical marijuana will roll on, Chilcutt vows. Ill people
will continue to smoke it. An underground network of Colorado growers will
continue to supply it to patients. And some doctors will continue to
quietly suggest it - legal or not.

"We need to stop making criminals out of sick people,'' says Chilcutt, a
soft-spoken Korean War veteran who smoked marijuana while undergoing
treatments for prostate cancer four years ago. "There are patients who are
using it in their fights to stay alive, to survive.

"I will start over next year, and we will have it back on the ballot . . .
(Our opponents) have lost their war on drugs and they've begun a war on
patients. They think sick people are vulnerable. Well, I'm strong and some
of the patients are strong and we're going to win.''

Marijuana's key ingredient, THC, already is prescribed in pill form under
the brand name Marinol. Some local doctors say the drug helps block nausea
and pump up sagging appetites as effectively as smokable pot. But a number
of patients who have tried Marinol complain that is leaves them feeling
"drugged'' or "anxious.''

Like few other hot-button issues, medical marijuana has jumped the tracks
of partisan politics, turning doctor against doctor and cop against cop.

The American Academy of Family Physicians is for it. The American Medical
Association is against it. Denver City Councilman Ed Thomas, a 22-year
police veteran, supports the use of marijuana for patients in chronic pain.
Arapahoe County Sheriff Pat Sullivan raised $18,000 to defeat Amendment 19.

Some conservative Christians say it's a fine idea. That aligns them - on
this issue - with many gay activists. There's often no rhyme or reason as
to who backs medical marijuana, though Chilcutt says many advocates have
seen someone close ravaged by a terminal disease.

"I have lost four really close friends to cancer in the last five years,''
says Chilcutt, who set up his spartan campaign headquarters in a Capitol
Hill mansion.

There, barren, white walls surround four desks, one copy machine, one
computer and a knee-

high filing cabinet. Classical music plays in the background as Chilcutt, a
retired psychology professor, explains why marijuana is good medicine.

First, he says, it helps people being treated for cancer or AIDS beat back
the nausea often triggered by their medicine. It also helps people with
AIDS put on weight by sparking their appetite. And it eases the interocular
pressure of glaucoma.

For people with epilepsy, it can help prevent seizures. For folks with
multiple sclerosis, it can quiet the spasticity in their muscles, Chilcutt
claims. Many of those assertions are based on testimonials from real people
in Amendment 19's own camp. Yet the same benefits also were praised in a
1996 report by the American Public Health Association, which has urged
Congress to make marijuana a legal, ready remedy.

"Marijuana has been used medicinally for centuries, and . . . cannabis
products were widely prescribed by physicians in the United States until
1937,'' says the American Journal of Public Health. In that year the
Marijuana Tax Act outlawed the plant despite disagreement from the American
Medical Association.

Standing hard against the pro-pot pack are a cadre of local police groups,
the Colorado District Attorneys Council and the state board of education,
which charge that medical marijuana supporters are blowing smoke.

"Nowhere in the modern history of medicine have we taken a weed and burned
it and inhaled it and called it a medicine,'' says Arapahoe County Sheriff
Sullivan. He heads an anti-Amendment 19 group called CALM (Citizens Against
Legalizing Marijuana), which sums up Chilcutt's initiative as a "very bad
idea.''

"It sends the wrong message to our young people that marijuana is
helpful,'' Sullivan says.

Pot smoking among high school seniors is on the rise, according to the
National Institute on Drug Abuse. More than 50 percent of seniors say they
have tried it, compared with 33 percent in 1992.

Some experts have blamed, in part, the debate over medical marijuana,
complaining that the dialogue over its potential benefits may have eroded
the carefully crafted "Just Say No'' campaign of the 1980s.

Even worse, marijuana "is not a harmless drug'' because it contains
carcinogens, decreases memory and hurts the immune system, contends a CALM
brochure. And most important, Sullivan says, the stuff is illegal.

Marijuana is classified by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as a
Schedule I controlled substance beside heroin and LSD. By placing it in
that group, the government deemed pot without therapeutic value and unsafe
for medical use.

One of Sullivan's political allies is the Colorado Medical Society, which
argues that any medical practice must be backed by solid, reproducible
research and not by the prevailing political winds.

Dr. Christopher Unrein, who practices geriatrics in Aurora and speaks for
the Colorado Medical Association, points out two crucial problems with
doctors who knowingly allow their patients to use pot. One, physicians can
never know how potent the marijuana might be. Two, they can't give the
patient any supervision or monitor the effects because it is illegal.

"There's no one responsible to make sure it's the right thing and that it's
working,'' Unrein says.

But the real issue behind medical marijuana is politics, pure and simple,
argue Unrein and Sullivan. They claim that what Chilcutt and his supporters
secretly want is for pot to be permissible for anyone in Colorado, that
they are simply using medicine as a back door to full legalization.

"It's a fantastic Fifth Avenue marketing tool - pull on the heartstrings of
the sick and dying,'' Sullivan says.

"If legalizing marijuana is the issue,'' Unrein adds, "don't cloak it in
medical purposes.''

Just look at the wealthy people who paid for Amendment 19, say its opponents.

According to campaign documents on file at the secretary of state's office,
Coloradans for Medical Rights received 99 percent of its funding - $156,200
- - from a group called Americans for Medical Rights, based in Santa Monica,
Calif.

Chilcutt identified the big money men in AMR as billionaire financier
George Soros, auto insurance magnate Peter Lewis and John Sperling,
president of the Apollo Group, a holding company that controls for-profit
universities and job-training centers.

Before the Colorado initiative, that trio pumped $1.2 million into a
similar California measure - Proposition 215. It passed in 1996 and allowed
Californians to grow and smoke pot for "any illness for which marijuana
provides relief,'' including chronic pain and arthritis. A doctor's oral
recommendation is required.

Over the past 20 years, 36 states have passed some form of legislation
recognizing marijuana's alleged medical value. And AMR's cash continues to
pay for ongoing state-level campaigns.

While Soros has said he does not support decriminalizing narcotics, former
Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano has dubbed him the
"Daddy Warbucks of drug legalization.'' Ethan Nadelmann, who heads Soros'
drug-policy institute, has been quoted as saying he hopes to "legalize the
personal possession of drugs by adult Americans.''

Sperling, meanwhile, told Reader's Digest that he thinks physicians should
be able to prescribe heroin, LSD and all drugs.

But Chilcutt contends that his chief funders are concerned only with
bringing chronically sick people some compassion and relief through pot.

"Some (of those financial backers) had cancer and illnesses in their family
and saw people use it first-hand,'' Chilcutt says.

Legalizing drugs "isn't part of my battle,'' Chilcutt adds. His "narrowly
worded'' measure stopped cold at opening up marijuana for medical purposes.

Had it been approved by Colorado voters, people with "debilitating medical
conditions'' like cancer, glaucoma and AIDS could have asked their doctors
to authorize pot in their treatment.

Qualifying patients would have been allowed to possess up to 2 ounces of
marijuana or to cultivate six plants. They would have had to find and buy
the pot themselves. And they would have received a confidential
identification card from the state health department that they could flash
to police officers to avoid arrest.

"I've read it and signed a petition in favor of it, and I think it's
actually quite conservative,'' says Dr. Charles Steinberg, head of the
Beacon Clinic, Boulder's only HIV treatment center.

"It sets a lot of limits. It (was) not going to open marijuana sales clubs
in Downtown Denver like (similar measures) did in San Francisco . . .
Forgive me, but it seems to be a no-brainer.''

A minority of Steinberg's AIDS patients have revealed to himthatthey are
using marijuana to put on weight or quell the queasiness that often comes
with the anti-HIV drugs known as protease cocktails.

"They're not getting necessarily stoned,'' Steinberg says. "The dose of
marijuana they require is pretty small, so they've learned how to do that
so they're not out of it.''

With an array of similar success stories floating around, the National
Nurses Society on Addictions recently decided to endorse medical marijuana.
The 23-

year-old group says it's time pot became a Schedule II drug so physicians
can prescribe it.

"If we have an opportunity to give a couple of hours of relief to people
with cancer, with AIDS, with MS or chronic pain, what's not to like about
that?'' says Ed Thomas, perhaps medical marijuana's most surprising
supporter. Now a city councilman, Thomas spent 15 years as a Denver street
cop, busting people for pot possession and trying to do his part to rid the
city of drugs.

"It's a tough stance for a former policeman to take, but I think it's just
a fair, honest, open way to deal with somebody's pain,'' Thomas says. "How
about just a little decent compassion? . . . So when we have some self-

righteous law-enforcement personnel who say, "By God, it's the law,' go let
them stand in front of the bed of a dying family member and let them have
the same position then.''

Checked-by: Richard Lake