MARIJUANA SUPPORTERS STATE CASE

Hearings: True believers testify to the drug's healing powers.

By: Daws C. Chmielewski
Irvine, CA

All Kenneth Smuland wanted was a chance to sleep, perchance to dream.

A spinalcord injury in 1982 left him paralyzed from the neck down. Fifteen years and numerous therapy sessions later, the Lake Forest man learned to walk with the aid of a cane. But his recovery is incomplete.

Spasms wrack his body, dooming him to long, restless nights. Relief, he says, came in the form of a controversial drug: marijuana.

``If I smoke marijuana, my spasms subside, and it allows me to get restful sleep,'' Smuland said.

He was among more than 20 people who testified Sunday to the curative properties of the drug once thought to induce ``reefer madness.'' They credited it with combatting nausea in cancer and AIDS patients, curing migraines and relieving menstrual cramps.

Close to 100 people attended the session sponsored by the Institute of Medicine of Washington, D.C. It's the first of three days of hearings weighing the contradictory evidence about marijuana's effects on the body.

Sessions continue today and Tuesday at the Beckman Center at the University of California, Irvine.

Sunday's hearings brought together the bowtied, starchedshirt culture of the National Academy of Sciences with the tiedyed shirts and hemp garments of Deadhead lookalikes.

Despite the outward clash of cultures, none of the anticipated fireworks erupted in the mostly onesided testimony of marijuana's supposed medical properties.

Sandra Bennett of the Northwest Center for Health & Safety expressed fears that legitimizing marijuana might encourage broader drug use among children. Her own son, she said, died with traces of cocaine in his system.

The hearing attracted advocates of the legalization movement, including Todd McCormack, who has achieved martyr status among some since his July arrest for growing thousands of marijuana plants in a BelAir mansion.

``When I buy it on the street, it can cost me as much as an ounce of gold,'' McCormick said. ``When I grow it at home, it can be as cheap as growing tomatoes.''

McCormick said he has suffered from recurring cancer since age 2 and has used marijuana since age 8 to battle the accompanying nausea and pain.

He wasn't the only one claiming lifealtering benefits.

``I've tried all kinds of medicine,'' said Marvin Edward Chavez, a Santa Ana resident and founder of the Orange County PatientDoctorNurse Support Group, as he hefted a plastic garbage bag bulging with prescriptiondrug containers.

After suffering years of chronic pain from fibromyalgia, a debilitating inflammation of the body's tissue, which prescription medication never eased, Chavez said he tried marijuana. ``There is a big difference in the side effects you get from cannabis it's positive.''

At times, the testimony had the quality of a homeopathy session.

Bonnie Metcalf said she boils the roots to form a poultice for inflamed joints, uses the leaves in brownies and smokes the blossom to fend off depression.

Amid the lengthy medical testimony, there were moments of levity.

Anna T. Boyce, the Mission Viejo resident who fought for passage of California's Proposition 215, legalizing the medical use of marijuana, took a gentle jab at President Clinton.

``I have never smoked,'' she said, ``but I have inhaled because I have been in rooms where people have used it.''