MEDICAL MARIJUANA USERS URGE CALM AMID FIERY DEBATE

Steve VanDerschelden lives in public housing. He's a Republican and a
fan of Fox News.

Linda Decker is a legal assistant at a Great Falls law firm. She lives
south of the city along the Missouri River.

VanDerschelden and Decker have something in common -- they both use
medical marijuana.

Businesses that sell marijuana are prohibited from operating in the
city of Great Falls under a ban approved June 1 on a split vote by the
City Commission.

The two Great Falls residents said they don't believe the city's
action will prevent them from obtaining medical marijuana for their
chronic pain, but they object to the city's move on symbolic and other
grounds.

For example, VanDerschelden said his caregiver, a medical marijuana
provider, told him about another client in Great Falls who is
chronically ill.

"He's homebound. He can't go anywhere. How the heck is he supposed to
go out of the city limits to get his medication?" VanDerschelden asked.

"That's a very sad situation, truly," said Great Falls City Attorney
James Santoro, who took a stern line against medical marijuana
businesses during City Commission debates this spring.

Santoro said in an interview that a caregiver still can grow marijuana
on behalf of a patient, but noted caregivers are prohibited from
selling marijuana to patients within city limits.

Santoro added that not all medical procedures are available to people
in Great Falls, and patients seeking those procedures sometimes must
leave the city for services.

In 2004, Montana voters approved medical marijuana for the chronically
ill and people in pain, but interest in the state program soared at
the end of the decade.

This year, a backlash against the number of medical marijuana patients
in Montana -- the total is expected to exceed 20,000 patients later
this summer -- has squelched medical marijuana businesses in cities
such as Great Falls and Kalispell, which enacted bans that prompted
moratoriums and provoked debates in many Montana communities.

Montana's Legislature is expected to take up myriad bills on the
subject in January.

Some people are hysterical about medical marijuana, VanDerschelden
contended.

"I think a lot of the country has a 'Reefer Madness' mentality,"
VanDerschelden said. "Reefer Madness" was a 1936 film that emphasized
the dangers of marijuana.

Others argue the concern is justified. Pam Christianson, a Billings
woman who was angered this spring when a medical marijuana shop tried
to open near her son's middle school, helped promote a brief petition
drive this spring to put ballot initiative to repeal Montana's medical
marijuana law on the Nov. 2 ballot.

The petition effort probably failed in part because of lack of time to
gather the necessary 24,000 signatures. But Christianson, a member of
the Billings group Safe Community, Safe Kids, said supporters will
continue to lobby the Legislature for an outright appeal of the law,
rather than a rewrite.

The only way to come up with a good medical marijuana law, if that's
possible, is to wipe out the flawed one, she said.

"I think that we've just got to start again," Christianson said in a
telephone interview. "It's just a mess."

Decker doesn't consider herself a stereotypical marijuana user. She
works in a law office and doesn't believe the marijuana she smokes in
a pipe at night affects her work the next day.

"Some of us are leading normal lives," Decker said. "We're not all
these potheads that are sitting around doing nothing."

At age 14, Decker was diagnosed with curvature of the spine, or
scoliosis. She was told her spine tilted at a 68 degree angle, instead
of being straight.

She underwent major surgery.

"I've got a metal rod that's fixed to the top and the bottom of my
spine," she said.

Decker did not experience a lot of pain as a young woman. Now 53, she
suffers from degenerative disc disease in her neck and lower back.

"It probably caught up to me about five years ago," she said. "I get
sharp pains down my legs. I don't want to do surgery."

Two years ago, she asked her family doctor to approve her for a
medical marijuana card. The physician dislikes medical marijuana, but
told Decker she was definitely a candidate for it and approved her
request. She found a caregiver in Bozeman, using the Internet, and
drives to see him about twice a year. She pays $200 for an ounce of
marijuana.

"An ounce of marijuana will last me six months," she
said.

Medical marijuana helps her cope during the day by allowing her to get
a solid 8 to 9 hours of sleep at night, she said.

"I'm in pain from the time I get up in the morning to the time I go to
bed," Decker said.

"It helps," she added. "I would be tossing and turning all night
(without marijuana) because of the pain."

VanDerschelden, 48, gained his medical marijuana card through the
Montana Caregivers Network traveling clinic in Great Falls in January.
He said he visited with a doctor for just a few minutes and doesn't
think the exam was thorough.

"I have no idea who this doctor was," he said.

Still, he's keeping the card. He paid $100 for the
consultation.

VanDerschelden said his medical troubles began at the Spokane, Wash.,
airport where he was working at the time.

"In 1986, I hurt my back on the loading dock at the airport in
Spokane," VanDerschelden said.

He suffered a hairline fracture in a spinal disc, which physicians
diagnosed in 2004, after he moved to Great Falls. He cannot afford
spinal surgery because he lacks health insurance, and doctors cannot
guarantee how much his pain would be reduced by the surgery.

VanDerschelden has suffered in pain for years since the
injury.

"There were times when it would put me on the floor," he
said.

Doctors prescribed a variety of prescription drugs to VanDerschelden,
who said the drugs produced side effects and personal problems. He
also slept fitfully.

"I've had everything up the line from Tylenol 3's up to Demerol," he
said. "I didn't sleep a whole heck of a lot."

The drugs took their toll on him in Great Falls, he
said.

"It cost me a relationship," VanDerschelden said. "I just walked out
on my girlfriend and her son. It cost me a job. It cost me a place to
live. I was drinking pretty hard at the time, too."

Pills and drinking alcohol also got him in trouble with the law, when
he used someone else's credit card without permission. His six years
of probation expires next year, he said.

Medical marijuana is far less damaging to him, and he has quit
drinking, VanDerschelden said.

He questions why people are so concerned about medical marijuana, but
don't give a second thought to all the damage prescriptions can do to
people.

"The morphine turned me into a zombie," VanDerschelden
said.

More than a year ago, he suffered another setback.

"I twisted my neck really bad in November of 2008," he
said.

"I take two or three hits (of marijuana) in the morning, and that
lasts usually through evening," he said, then he does the same again
at night. "I don't smoke around my grandkids."

He said he goes to friends' homes on private property to smoke his
marijuana.

VanDerschelden said he uses about a quarter-ounce of marijuana a
month.

"That's 100 bucks, when I can afford it," he said.

VanDerschelden's caregiver is from Great Falls, but "it's not a
hardship on me if I've got to go out of the city limits to get my
medicine," VanDerschelden said.

Decker's caregiver is in Bozeman, so the Great Falls ban does not
affect her.

Both patients dislike the Montana Caregivers Network and its traveling
caravan approach, offering quick visits with a doctor to get a medical
marijuana card.

Decker doesn't believe it's right for patients to smoke marijuana and
then "shove it in people's faces." At the same time, she said she
believes marijuana eventually should be generally legalized.

Decker and VanDerschelden each think the Legislature should tighten up
the rules so not just anyone can get medical marijuana. An interim
legislative committee last week discussed whether caregivers should be
licensed by a regulatory board. It also talked about whether two
doctors should be required to approve each medical marijuana patient
for the state program. VanDerschelden believes anyone age 25 or
younger should need a very clear reason to obtain medical marijuana.

Last month's medical marijuana business ban by the City Commission
bothered Decker and VanDerschelden.

"My biggest hope is that they lift the ban," VanDerschelden said. "Be
reasonable."

"They just need to be a little bit more open-minded," Decker said.
"It's here. I think it will stay."

In Great Falls, an ordinance to allow medical marijuana businesses in
the city limits, with restrictions, gained support from two
Republicans on the nonpartisan commission. Commissioner Mary Jolley
argued city officials should consider the wishes of Montana voters,
who approved the law 62 percent to 38 percent, while Commissioner Fred
Burow said medical marijuana can be helpful to people.

Retired Police Chief Bob Jones, now a commissioner, went from
supporting a moratorium to backing an outright ban, as did Mayor
Michael Winters and Commissioner Bill Bronson, after a Great Falls
Tribune story ran the Sunday before the crucial June 1 vote. The story
outlined complaints by school officials and others about a perceived
increase in marijuana use among teenagers brought on by the medical
marijuana law.

In one incident at C.M. Russell High School, a female student came to
school smelling of marijuana. She said her boyfriend had smoked a
joint in the car. Upon inspecting the vehicle, the principal noticed a
child seat in the back of the car.

Jones, Winters and Bronson each cited the Tribune story in voting for
the ban.

"I think there was a mass hysteria after the CMR incident,"
VanDerschelden said. "It was responsible reporting, but it only showed
it from one angle."

VanDerschelden believes people age 25 and younger should need to have
a very good reason to get a state medical marijuana card.

"An 18-year-old girl that gets menstrual cramps doesn't need a medical
marijuana card," VanDerschelden said. "Take a Midol and shut up."

Christianson said that adding a few restrictions is not enough to make
Montana's medical marijuana statute worth keeping.

She believes the law ties the hands of law enforcement, allowing many
more people to smoke marijuana. Christianson said that's not what
people voted for in 2004.

"The Medical Marijuana Act is too loosely written to ever be safely
and effectively utilized," she added in an e-mail.

Paul Schmidt of Helena, who became a medical marijuana caregiver to
help his son, disagrees with Christianson.

"I think it's important that we don't do that to the patients that we
have," Schmidt said of repealing the law.

He said his son, Nathan, 28, suffers from severe back pain from years
of skiing, snowboarding, cliff jumping and soccer, so doctors placed
him on narcotic drugs to ease the pain.

"He was a straight-A student in mechanical engineering," Schmidt said.
"He had to bail because he couldn't concentrate anymore."

The younger Schmidt lost the ability to concentrate because of
painkillers, but medical marijuana improved his situation and enabled
him to work again, his father said.

Schmidt said the experience with his son led the father and son, along
with another partner, to open a medical marijuana business last year.
Helena-area-based Sleeping Giant Caregivers has since grown from a
dozen patients to 334 patients, Paul Schmidt said.

"Ninety percent of the people that I have here are in a bad way," he
said.

He added that he doesn't hesitate to drop patients if it appears they
are not responsible medical marijuana users.

Schmidt hopes the Legislature will come up with good solutions to the
problems with the existing law when it meets beginning in January, but
he believes self-regulation of the industry will work best.

Law officers continue to take a dim view of medical
marijuana.

The Alexandria, Va.-based International Association of Chiefs of
Police takes a firm stand against medicinal use of the drug, according
to its legislative representative, Meredith Mays Ward. She noted that
at the group's Denver conference last year, it approved a resolution
criticizing "a growing misconception that marijuana can be used
safely, smoked and ingested, and is a cure-all for everything from
headaches to bi-polar disease."

The group cited studies showing damage caused by marijuana use and
warned outright legalization of marijuana would lead to "an increase
of criminal behavior and health risks."

Even as law enforcement and some public officials seek to stem what
they see as a rising tide of marijuana use, a June 19 Science News
article said "some researchers have been quietly moving in new
directions" to test marijuana and derivatives as potential treatments
for a wide variety of diseases.

If marijuana caused consternation and controversy in the 1960s and
1970s in the United States, its ability to spur emotional responses
does not appear to have lessened during the new century.

"We've already been through this," Decker said.