POT HOLE: A SOUTHWEST MISSOURI HAMLET IS LEADING THE LATEST FIGHT TO
LEGALIZE MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Cliff Village, a tiny suburb of Joplin, has become the second
Missouri city to legalize marijuana for medical use. Residents can
pack their pipes with impunity, so long as their pot comes with a
doctor's prescription.

But with a population in the double-digits and a local sheriff who
vows to lock up any pot smoker he can find, the town's 30-year-old
mayor, Joe Blundell, concedes that the move is "symbolism, pure and
simple."

"I'd like to go and testify to legislators about this plant," says
Blundell, who is wheelchair-bound, the result of a train accident in
2000. "I'd tell them I'm not a criminal, that I'm in a horrific
amount of pain and I'd rather take something natural and holistic
rather than something being pushed by Pfizer."

A handful of state lawmakers and pro-grass activists hope the actions
taken by this southwest Missouri hamlet will help blaze a path for
the statewide passage of a long-stymied medical-marijuana law.

"They've really taken the issue by the horns," says Dan Viets,
coordinator of the state's chapter of the National Organization for
the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). "Perhaps lawmakers will realize
that even rural communities have embraced cannabis as a legitimate
form of treatment."

Cliff Village, which passed the ordinance February 1, modeled the
legislation after a bill introduced in the state House of
Representatives that would allow anyone with a doctor's OK to grow up
to seven plants and possess an ounce of marijuana.

"I just don't see any reason why something that can be regulated by a
doctor and can help people with their illnesses should be
prohibited," argues Rep. Regina Walsh, a St. Louis Democrat who
cosponsored the bill introduced last month. "I just don't see any
reason why we can't alleviate their pain, especially if it's for
something like cancer or some horrific illness."

If history is any gauge, however, it may be quite awhile before the
state's sick citizens can legally fire up a joint. The latest
proposal in the decades-old debate is identical to ones that have
stalled in the state legislature the past two years.

"There's a stigma involved in this," says Rep. Kate Meiners, the
Kansas City Democrat who introduced the bill. "When you envision
someone smoking medicinal marijuana, what you see is a long-haired
hippie. You don't see the little old lady with glaucoma."

Previous measures failed when former House Speaker Rod Jetton waited
until the waning days of the legislative session to assign the bills
to the Health and Human Services Committee, virtually guaranteeing
that the measures would never come to a floor vote. It appears
likely the new Speaker, Ron Richard, will continue using his
predecessor's makeshift pocket veto.

"We don't have any plans to assign the bill to a committee," says
Richard's spokeswoman Kristen Blanchard. "The Speaker and the caucus
have priorities that have to do with our family-recovery plan and
helping Missouri families who are out of jobs and that sort of thing."

Richard is the former mayor of Joplin, an unexpected hotbed in the
statewide fight for medical marijuana. In addition to the rogue
suburb of Cliff Village, a recent ballot initiative spearheaded by
the Joplin NORML chapter received signatures from nearly 15 percent
of the city's registered voters.

"He's a local business owner here in Joplin," the city's NORML
president Kelly Maddy says of Richard. "He owns bowling alleys with
bars in them, so he's no stranger to recreational substances. He
knows it's a viable topic in this town. He seems reasonable and
open-minded, but obviously he's kind of shying away from the issue
the same way Jetton did."

When it comes to prescription pot, Columbia is the most progressive
city in the state. The college town became the first and only
Missouri city (prior to Cliff Village) to enact its own
medical-marijuana ordinance in 2004.

For the most part, however, medical-marijuana lobbyists have found
the grass to be greener in other states. In November, Michigan became
the first state in the Midwest to permit doctor-approved dope,
joining thirteen others nationwide.

Because state- and city-level measures are at odds with federal
regulations, the Drug Enforcement Administration has at times raided
marijuana dispensaries and arrested patients in other states. After
a new round of raids in California, a spokesman for President Barack
Obama said "federal resources should not be used to circumvent state
laws."

Missouri lawmakers modeled their bill after Hawaii's
medical-marijuana law, enacted in 2000. The amount of the drug that
people would be permitted to possess is relatively small compared to
other states. Washington allows its residents to keep up to 24 ounces
of pot at a time - a quantity patients there argue is too little,
and law enforcement contends is too much.

Opponents of medical marijuana assert that letting doctors regulate
the reefer will only make the drug more widely available for
recreational use and abuse.

"I already see a lot of abuse of legal prescription drugs out there,"
Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland says of Cliff Village's law: "I
just see this as another way to misuse drugs."

Counters Viets: "These guys aren't going to risk their medical license just
to give someone a joint. Nobody said it will be kosher to give out pot to
anyone who wants it."

The Missouri State Medical Association, like its national counterpart,
the American Medical Association, refuses to take a formal policy
stance on medical marijuana. In recent years, though, the drug has
been used to treat the symptoms of an increasingly broad array of illnesses.

St. Louis resident Mark Pedersen suffers seizures and severe migraines
from the muscle-and-tissue disease fibromyalgia. He says he tried
several high-powered prescription drugs for years but only found
relief in marijuana. In 2005 he established the Cannabis Patient
Network and began traveling the country, lobbying lawmakers and
interviewing others who use marijuana medicinally.

"We're talking tens of thousands of people in Missouri who could be
medical-cannabis patients, without a doubt," says Pedersen. "Illnesses
like fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease,
Parkinson's - the list of people who could benefit from the use of
cannabis is very lengthy."

A newer convert is recently elected state representative Mike Colona,
a Democrat who represents the city's Tower Grove neighborhood. Colona
says he agreed to cosponsor the latest bill because of his experience
as a board member for the Saint Louis Effort for AIDS.

"I spoke to several doctors who treat AIDS patients, and it was their
opinion, overwhelmingly, that the ability to prescribe marijuana would
be very beneficial," Colona says.

"We trust our physicians to prescribe narcotics that are much more
powerful than marijuana for their patients - OxyContin, Percocet,
Vicodin - that kind of thing. If we're trusting doctors to do the
right thing with potent drugs like that, I think we can afford the
medical community the courtesy to treat this drug the same way."