WITH JOHN MERLA, IT'S ONE GOOFY THING AFTER ANOTHER

As the child of parents who both died painful deaths from lung cancer
and suffered the excruciating effects of harsh chemotherapy, I was
happy to read in a story by The Associated Press last week that next
month state lawmakers will consider a bill to legalize marijuana for
people with debilitating medical conditions. Those conditions would
include cancer, chronic pain, severe nausea, seizures, glaucoma, HIV
and AIDS, and persistent muscle spasms.

The bill, proposed by Sen. Nicholas Scutari, will come up for
discussion be-fore a Senate health panel June 8 and, if passed, would
make New Jersey the 12th state to legalize marijuana for medicinal
use, even though the federal government does not recognize those
laws. And although the measure is opposed by the usual gang who say
it's a smoke screen for generalized legalization, the notion is
supported by many experts, including the National Academy of
Sciences, which says pot can help people suffering
chemotherapy-induced nausea and AIDS wasting.

If you have supported a loved one with terminal cancer through
chemotherapy, you well know the treatment commonly reduces the
patient's appetite to the point of staggering weight loss (my father
weighed 115 pounds when he died, my mother 90). You know that the
currently available and legalized form of medical marijuana (an
adulterated version of THC that seeks to stimulate the munchies) does not work.

And you know, from experience, that it is nonsensical, and even
cruel, to deny terminal patients anything that might make their lives
easier, might make them more comfortable in their last months.

The argument that allowing those patients access to marijuana might
lead them to use harder drugs is specious to the point of insanity,
since most of those patients are already receiving massive doses of
addictive medication to alleviate pain. To suggest that a patient
already receiving huge doses of morphine, OxyContin, oxycodone, Xanax
or the like to manage pain will be threatened by a few tokes of
marijuana to stimulate appetite is ludicrous.

Carefully supervised, marijuana could be another important tool in
the physician's box, and a meaningful comfort to patients suffering
certain diseases. And if enough states legalize it for those humane
uses, the federal government will eventually have to come around.
That's why I support passage of this bill in New Jersey. I just wish
marijuana had been more readily available to my mom and dad.