DYING NEED COMPASSION

In the past six years, I have lost two of my dearest friends to AIDS, and
am now primary caregiver to a third. In the first two cases I was forced to
find marijuana on the street to alleviate the dreadful symptoms of the
final stages of this disease.

This year is the first time I have been able to go to a secure, clean,
well-lighted, professionally staffed and legal place to obtain medical
marijuana. And now Attorney General Dan Lungren is telling me that I should
have my dying friends grow their own when too often the effort of getting
out of bed Is more than they can manage. Where Is the humanity or the
compassion in such an alternative?

California voters clearly stated their desire to provide medical marijuana
to residents who are chronically ill and dying. As a sovereign state,
Californians must stand up to federal pressure to abandon what we know is
right in caring for our chronically ill and dying.

With all due respect to Dennis Peron for his tireless work in getting the
Marijuana Initiative on the ballot, his continued hippy-dippy style has a
major negative impact in our fight to care for the sick in a professional
and caring manner. Peron's mannerisms do not reflect the average
Californian who needs medical marijuana. And Lungren's seeming personal
vendetta against Peron discounts a large and meaningful population behind a
circumstantially selected "Banner Boy."

The Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative is stringent in its processing of
potential candidates for medical marijuana. The building is in a business
district with security guards posted at the doors, and in the marijuana
room. All entrants are checked in and out of the building. No one but the
patients and their caregivers are allowed in the marijuana room and a photo
ID must be presented each time they enter. Unless and until someone comes
up with a viable, humane, compassionate and feasible alternative for
distributing medical marijuana in Oakland, or anywhere in California, these
cooperatives should not be allowed to go out of operation.

Dan Lungren must be either the luckiest man in the world or else he has no
friends or family. Anyone in California in the forty-something bracket who
has not lost a family member or friend to cancer or AIDS has to be either
incredibly blessed or so totally isolated as to be completely out of touch
with the real world.

Lungren has apparently never held the head of a loved one while he vomited
uncontrollably due to chemotherapy; cooked a special request meal, only to
have to throw it away because his loved one lost his appetite due to
wasting syndrome; or watched them sink into a vegetative depression which
was unrespon-sive to prescription drugs. I'm sure he never had to
catheterize a quadriplegic whose muscle spasms left him exhausted: or watch
his mother go blind from glaucoma. That such a fortunate man should be so
inhuman as to press his heartless agenda against the sick is beyond
comprehension. It isn't death that is hard, It's the process of dying.

Wake up, Dan Lungren, one of these days it will be your turn.

Robin Bryant lives in Oakland.