IN MY VIEW

In its May 6 editorial on the workplace drug testing case recently
before the Oregon Supreme Court, Washburn v. Columbia Forest
Products, Bulletin editors commented on Oregon's 1998 medical
cannabis (marijuana) legislation as being "as much about sanctioning
pot use as it is about treating the symptoms of illness."

The editorial says, "We do wish, though, they'd be honest about what
it is they're trying to do rather than pushing smoke screens like
Oregon's medical pot law."

Oregon's medical cannabis laws are doing primarily what they were
established to do - providing protection from prosecution to patients
who find cannabis useful. In Oregon, there are over 12,000 registered
medical cannabis-using patients in the state, and some 2,000 doctors
have given them the recommendations necessary.

I asked Dr. Rick Bayer, chief petitioner for the 1998 Oregon Medical
Marijuana Act, how the Washburn v. Columbia Forest Products case will
affect patients utilizing cannabis in Oregon, and he said, "All
supporters of medical cannabis and supporters of disabled workers
were disappointed in the final outcome of the Washburn case."

Few argue with an employer's "right" to submit their employees to
workplace drug testing. Drug testing can be seen as a direct assault
against the cannabis community because the non-water-soluble cannabis
metabolites remain stored in the body for long periods of time. Other
drugs - opiates, cocaine, methamphetamine and hallucinogens - are
water soluble and flushed from the system in a day or so.

Information and statistics on drug testing are rare, and opinion is
often the sole "evidence" in support of drug testing. There is no
evidence showing drug users cause workplace accidents and whether
drug users use more medical benefits is inconclusive at best.

The Supreme Court's decision dealt not so much with medical cannabis
but instead relied on disability as the factor in their decision. But
none of the members of the court lost their jobs, and Columbia Forest
Products only lost one employee. Robert Washburn, on the other hand,
lost his job even though he never displayed impairment at work.

There are employers in Oregon who acknowledge the OMMA. A worker for
these companies, with their OMMA card, will not be dismissed for a
THC positive urinalysis. Columbia Forest Products did not have to
dismiss Washburn. And therein lies the rub. Not impaired on company
time but being an acknowledged medical cannabis user and losing his
job, Washburn becomes another poster boy in what is mostly a federal
policy of wrongful persecution against cannabis and its consumers.

Consider the recent release of the statement by the Food and Drug
Administration that cannabis has no current proven medical use.
Really? Is that why the federal government has its own medical
cannabis grown at the University of Mississippi, which it provides to
five patients, once a month, in the form of 300 prerolled cigarettes in a can.

In its blatantly false statement, the FDA openly displays the sad
continuation of seven decades of official federal policy built upon
lies and the providing of intentional misinformation on cannabis.

When the medical literature available on cannabis is reviewed, there
are some gems that need to be noted. In 1974, a study was conducted
by researchers at the Medical College of Virginia. Funded by the
National Institute of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages
the immune system, researchers in that study found instead that THC
slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice - lung and breast
cancer and a virus-induced leukemia.

That study was shut down by the Drug Enforcement Agency and buried.
It was validated again in 2000 when researchers in Madrid announced
they had destroyed incurable brain tumors in rats by injecting them
with THC, the active ingredient in cannabis.

For Washburn, a relatively harm-free medicine that kept him
comfortable while he slept and rested effectively cost him his job.
His dismissal took another worker off Oregon's tax roll. As one
patient told me, "I know it helps with my symptoms, and I know that
with it I can still work. If I have the chance."

The Bulletin does our communities a service by providing input on
this subject. By allowing an open and public debate I have no doubt
the false stance of the federal prohibition bureaucracy will be laid
bare and cannabis will once again be legal.

But it is imperative to first offer protection to our patients.
Seventy years of misinformation is an immense hurdle to overcome. It
is not the legalization community that is deceptive, rather, it is
our government.

Cannabis is a safe and affordable alternative (and easily grown in
the garden) for many conditions and diseases when compared to a
regimen of very expensive and often toxic pharmaceuticals.

Allan Erickson, of Eugene, is a member of the Drug Policy Forum of
Oregon, the Media Awareness Project and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.