Medical use of marijuana goes on trial in Michigan

Ailments not justification for pot possession, judge tells Allen Park
native with AIDS, cancer.

By Charlie Cain / Detroit News Lansing Bureau Chief

National efforts to legalize marijuana for medical purposes suffered twin
setbacks this week when Washington state voters rejected a ballot question
and a suburban Detroit judge said medical necessity can't be argued in a
possession case.

Wednesday, a day after Washington voters decided not to let doctors
recommend marijuana for treatment, Romulus District Judge Tina Green said a
48yearold Allen Park native can't cite his cancer and AIDS conditions to
justify the seven marijuana cigarettes police caught him with last year.

Peter McWilliams, a bestselling author of selfhelp books, said his lawyer
will ask the judge to change her mind once more before a trial begins
sometime later this year.

"I'm not guilty of anything other than trying to save my life. If I don't
(combat nausea to) keep these antiAIDS pills down, I don't stay alive,"
McWilliams said in an interview from his home. He now lives in Los Angeles.

He faces a year in prison if convicted, though prosecutors say they have no
interest in jailing him.

McWilliams' case symbolizes a growing debate over marijuana joints as a
relief for severe nausea and pain.

Eight states let a doctor recommend or prescribe marijuana for patients
suffering from AIDS, cancer, glaucoma and other severe ailments. But the
federal government has taken a hard line, maintaining that its ban on
marijuana supersedes state law.

Only in California, where voters approved Proposition 215 a year ago, are
patients receiving legal marijuana though the Clinton administration is
challenging that in courts.

In the spring of 1996, McWilliams was diagnosed as having nonHodgkins
lymphoma and AIDS. He started chemotherapy and radiation treatments and
began taking AIDS pills three times a day. The lifeextending medicine
caused severe nausea, said McWilliams, who obtained legal marijuana on the
advice of his doctor and smokes as much as an ounce each week.

After visiting family and friends in Detroit last December, McWilliams
carrying marijuana legally obtained out west was arrested at Detroit
Metro Airport.

Judge Green last week said McWilliams, whose brother Michael is a TV critic
for The Detroit News, could base his defense on the drug's medical use. But
Wednesday she reversed herself.

"There is no way that this court can find that if Mr. McWilliams did not
use marijuana that it would cause him serious bodily harm," she concluded.
"I apologize to the attorneys. I don't like to change my mind."

Richard Padzieski, chief of operations for the Wayne County Prosecutor's
Office, was pleased.

"We're all set to go," he said. "We're not necessarily looking for
incarceration. But on the other hand, we are looking for people to follow
the law."

His office twice offered plea agreements that would have resulted in
several hundred dollars in court costs, but no record if he broke no
further laws.

In the other setback for proponents of pot therapy, voters in Washington on
Tuesday rejected a ballot proposal to allow marijuana as medicine.

Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws, said the vote shouldn't sidetrack the effort to
bring legal marijuana to seriously ill patients.

"Whether the federal government likes it or not, medical marijuana will be
an issue in the '98 election cycle," said St. Pierre, who notes that
efforts to let voters decide continue in at least a halfdozen states.

The medical and scientific community is split over whether marijuana can
offer relief to the sick or is "Cheech and Chong medicine," as some critics
say.

A 1991 Harvard Medical School survey of 2,000 cancer specialists found that
44 percent had recommended marijuana to patients.

The American Medical Association this year stopped short of suggesting that
doctors be allowed to prescribe marijuana to patients, but said physicians
should be free to inform patients that marijuana might be a useful treatment.

U.S. drug policy chief Barry McCaffrey, in the wake of California's vote
last year, warned the doctors who prescribe drugs could face criminal
penalties and lose the right to prescribe drugs. McCaffrey said marijuana
remains dangerous and the debate is nothing more than a smoke screen to win
full legalization of the drug, outlawed by the federal government a
halfcentury ago.

But a federal judge blocked the government from acting against California
doctors who recommend pot to patients. That would violate their right to
free speech, the judge said.

The New England Journal of Medicine weighed in this year, opining: "A
federal policy that prohibits physicians from alleviating suffering by
prescribing marijuana for seriously ill patients is misguided, heavyhanded
and inhumane."

In Michigan, there is no current effort to legalize medical marijuana,
though the state did allow it from 197987.

Michigan's law let medical marijuana be supplied to "cancer chemotherapy
patients and glaucoma patients who are certified ... by a physician as
being involved in a lifethreatening or sensethreatening situation and who
is not responding to conventional medical treatment."

But since the federal government refused to supply marijuana to Michigan,
the state got the drug from local law enforcers. Few patients participated
in the shortlived program.

Gov. John Engler opposes medical marijuana on grounds that other drugs have
been developed to take its place, but supported Michigan's former law.

In 1982, he cosponsored a Senate resolution chiding the federal government
for imposing "regulatory ploys and obscure bureaucratic devices ... (which)
prevent patients from obtaining marijuana for legitimate medical
applications."

Sparring over smoke

These arguments are voiced in the debate over marijuana as a medical tool.
Proponents say

* The public favors it, polls show.

* Many medical specialists think marijuana shows great promise in offering
relief from nausea and pain to some patients suffering from cancer, AIDS,
glaucoma, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy.

* If a patient eases pain from a terminal illness by using marijuana,
society isn't harmed.

* Marijuana isn't more dangerous than alcohol or tobacco, and also should
be legal for adults.

Opponents say

* It would send a mixed message to the public since the government
campaigns to convince consumers that all smoking is bad and that marijuana
is a dangerous drug.

* The federal government, which banned its use in 1937, still labels
marijuana as a dangerous drug which contains hundreds of compounds, some
suspected of causing cancer.

* Letting voters determine whether marijuana is a safe medicine is a bad
public policy.

What do you think?

Should the state allow patients with cancer and other serious illnesses get
prescriptions to use marijuana for pain and nausea relief? Tell us what you
think. Please include your name, town and daytime phone number. You can:

* Fax your response at (313) 2222335.

* Call Ameritech PagesPlus at (313) 9621020, and press News Now hotline
8901.

* Write Soundoff, The Detroit News, 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48226.

* Our EMail address: soundoff@detnews.com

Copyright 1997, The Detroit News