RIGHT TO LIGHT

Patients, Doctors Groups Push for Medical Marijuana Research, Treatment

CEDAR FALLS - As a local blues musician's CD plays in the
background, a man opens a baggie of marijuana and rolls a thin joint.

As he puffs, smoke wafts through the detatched garage behind his
Cedar Falls home, and he visibly relaxes.

But the man - who wouldn't give his name for fear of prosecution for
marijuana possession - wasn't looking to get high. Instead, he
claims the marijuana relaxes his leg muscles, which have been stiff
ever since a spinal cord injury left him in a wheelchair
nearly three decades ago.

After about four hits, he lifted up his legs and pressed them
against the floor, straightening them and moving them around.

"I can feel it now, actually," he said. "It doesn't take that long."

Since his injury, he's been on various prescription medications and
treatments to relax his muscles, which were always tense, but they
were expensive, had unpleasant side effects or were ineffective.

He never smoked marijuana in his youth and only smoked a few times
in his early 20s. Last April, he was at a friend's house and smoked.
His muscles shook and then relaxed. The next day, he told his doctor
that he hadn't felt so relaxed since the injury.

"He just looked at me dumbfounded and he said, 'I can't recommend
it,'" the Cedar Falls man said.

But since then, it's been the only "medicine" he takes - and he
takes it like medicine. His dosage schedule is scrawled on a cabinet
in the garage, he keeps it stored in a prescription bottle and a tin
and he smokes it at the appointed times by himself.

Nevertheless, marijuana isn't like other prescriptions. It's an herb
that the man has to buy on the black market. Possession of it is
illegal. He smokes it in secret. He wishes it didn't have to be that way.

"I would like to take that aspect away from it," he said.

So would some doctors' groups in Iowa. A new resolution from the
Iowa Medical Society recommending marijuana be opened up for
treatment of medical conditions follows just months after the Iowa
Board of Pharmacy's similar recommendation.

Both advocate for more research and for doctors to be able to
prescribe the herb, which is currently classified as a schedule I
substance. That push also has translated into the Medical Marijuana
Act being brought up in the state legislature earlier this session,
though it failed to be brought to the floor.

Even so, that's good news to groups like the Iowa Patients for
Medical Marijuana, which has worked to promote marijuana as a
legitimate treatment for medical ailments and get legislators
interested in the topic.

"I definitely think it helps," Jimmy Morrison, founder of IPMM,
wrote in an e-mail. "They are finally acknowledging that it has
'medical value.'"

But it's unclear if marijuana does have value as a treatment. Except
anecdotally among patient groups, the drug hasn't been extensively studied.

That, said Dr. Paul Franke, is the point. As vice president of
medical affairs with Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare and an Iowa
Medical Society member, Franke said the resolution was "long
overdue." He said doctors can't know if marijuana is a legitimate
treatment until it is studied in peer-review journals, and it can't
be studied while it's still illegal.

"We have to remind ourselves, physicians are able to prescribe
highly dangerous substances with known side effects," Franke said.
"We do this day in and day out and have been given that privilege
for the good of society, and there is no reason we should not be
able to prescribe marijuana if the research supports it."

Though there are legal consequences, users of marijuana for medical
reasons believe in the treatment enough to stick with it.

"I've told members of my family. They sort of go, 'Well, if it
works,'" the Cedar Falls marijuana user said. "It just should not be an issue."