MARIJUANA THE MEDICINE

Proposition 215's recent passage may have positive consequences for San
Francisco's AIDS community

This marijuana plant, normally abused as an illegal narcotic, is now
harvested to relieve the symptoms of AIDS and it medications, eliminating
nausea and appetite loss.

In deep dark laboratories mystic scientists puzzle over Buckeyball and
enzymatic activation substrates, but wait. There's a more simple solution
lying around home: marijuana, the ethereal drug that supposedly makes you
fly and relieves the stresses of AIDS with one stone. When other AIDS
combatants such as AZT trigger dreadful intonaions, why can't we turn to an
illegal drug to save AIDS patients? It's that one word the government is
having trouble with, illegal.

The public wants it; the patients want it; the patients lawyers really want
it, but the governor will preside. Isn't high time Pete didn't pick up his
pen to veto another issue? Of course the governor cannot negate a ratified
initiative, the next step that San Francisco patrons took with Proposition
211. I firmly believe that if the drug is only distributed to
doctor-approved AIDS patients and is only used in proportion to the amount
needed to smooth the virus, there is no harm done by saying yes to the AIDS
initiative. No doubt.

The initiative insists that the California laws against the growing and
intake of marijuana shall not pertain to patients. The initiative states,
"When the marijuana is for the personal medical use of a patient under a
physician's recommendation, the traditional anti-drug laws shall not
apply." It gives the American people a chance to buttress an initiative
that will benefit those patients who need help, nothing more. It's not as
if we're legalizing drugs nationwide; instead we're offering a remedy to an
impending dilemma.

Myriad doctors advocate the medical access to marijuana for soothing AIDS,
cancer, and even glaucoma. AZT, the existing, uncomfortable prescription
for AIDS, instigates numbness, diarrhea, nausea, and appetite loss.
Marijuana, on the other hand, depletes the nausea, the appetite loss, the
restroom tie-ups. These people are on the verge of death; there is no
legitimate excuse for the retention of a drug that could alleviate their
lives.

What lives here is a terrible sorrow that weeping cannot symbolize. Since
when has the man who carried a gun for public defense been forced to give
it up because of what others might do with it? If marijuana is carefully
confined, no one else can fiddle with it.