THE NEED FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA IS REAL AND IMMEDIATE

The results are in! The Oregon newspaper ranking of conditions
qualifying for an Oregon Medical Marijuana Program card clearly puts
glaucoma ahead of severe pain as an honorable disease to have.

After all, who wouldn't feel sorry for persons slowly losing vision
and even allow them to use marijuana as "medicine" to treat it?
Newspaper editors can stand a few hundred "patients" using marijuana
"medicine" but not the thousands who have qualified with less
honorable and sympathetic reasons, like severe pain.

Newspapers across the state agree, if thousands of Oregonians say
they have severe pain, and want to treat it with marijuana, they must
be faking it. The number alone shows that to medical marijuana
supporters it is all just a "charade" meant as a back door to
marijuana legalization.

That is the gist of the two recent editorials, one from The
Oregonian, commenting on medical marijuana and its supporters. This
paper challenges medical marijuana supporters to swear that no
cardholders are accessing marijuana improperly, apparently holding
that if there is one such person, the whole program is bogus. Does
its concern for propriety extend to those thousands of people who
doctor shop for multiple prescriptions of their truly addictive drugs?

The Oregonian, apparently thinking it scandalous, claims that
"anyone" over 18 can get a card. Actually, there is no age limit
(just as there is no age limit on cancer victims), but the "note"
from the doctor requires first that there be medical records of
recent vintage which clearly show the existence of a qualifying
disease or medical condition.

The nonprofit groups running clinics all require existing medical
records. None of them make an initial diagnosis for any patient, but
only verify the records showing the condition. Ask the reporter from
a neighboring newspaper who tried three times to get a card at
clinics and was unsuccessful, no matter how sad his tale or how much
money was offered. No records, no appointment, no card.

Both papers seem to believe that the only proper use of marijuana
medically is for "terminal illnesses" or conditions "unresponsive" to
other medications. That view reflects an extraordinary degree of
ignorance regarding the outstanding utility of marijuana to treat a
myriad of illnesses and medical conditions.

It is one thing to be ignorant, it is another thing entirely to
willfully remain so. If anyone wishes to comment coherently on the
medical uses of marijuana, it would behoove them to review the
rapidly expanding body of research on such uses, uses ranging from
actual curing of cancer to the best treatment yet for PTSD. In the
treatment of many conditions, marijuana replaces a host of
"conventional medications" and has none of the debilitating side
affects of the drugs it replaces.

It is not only ignorance, however, which causes the Oregonian to
state and the Mail Tribune to imply that medical marijuana is just a
"charade" to legalize marijuana by the "back door." To hold that
position requires a deep-seated, gratuitous cynicism regarding
medical marijuana and those who would support it.

As the author of Oregon's first medical marijuana bill in 1993, I
reject that view because I know what started the work on medical
marijuana. It was the realization that among those who were working
for legalization were many who were sick and dying from lack of a
proper medicine for their conditions, marijuana. As I lost colleagues
over the years I decided that, logical though legalization was, those
folks could not wait, they needed help immediately -- thus, the words
which would later become the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act were born.

If Oregonians were ready to adopt legalization, there would be such a
measure on the ballot, but they are not. But that should never mean
that sick Oregonians should be denied access to the medicine they
need while society cogitates.

It is wonderful that such a powerful, yet safe medicine like
marijuana can be grown by or for those who need it. But some people
have such "black thumbs" that they could not grow mold on bread and
some of them need marijuana. Some folks know no one who can grow for
them or need medicine immediately. That is why Measure 74 is so important.

But, Measure 74 is not legalization. Measure 74 is a safe, regulated,
nonprofit-based, revenue-creating, compassionate response to
Oregonians' increasing need. Legalization may come. The need for
Measure 74 is here now.