DOCTOR'S OPPOSITION TO MARIJUANA ROOTED IN TRAINING, LIFE EXPERIENCES

Dr. Donald Kurth thinks the medicinal benefits of marijuana have been
exaggerated while the dangers of the drug have been downplayed.

He speaks on the subject from a unique perspective: He is a doctor
with multiple degrees who will assume the presidency of the American
Society of Addiction Medicine in April.

He is also a former heroin addict who spent 27 months in
rehabilitation and a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for 17
years. On top of that, he is familiar with the public-policy aspects
of medical marijuana, having served for four years as the mayor of a
city of 180,000 in California.

Kurth, whose family has deep roots in Montana, laid out his views
Wednesday afternoon during a speech at the annual meeting of the
Rimrock Foundation in the Mansfield Health Education Center and in an
interview with The Gazette earlier Wednesday.

Kurth acknowledged that there is a "sharp division" over marijuana
even within the medical profession, but he said Americans need to
have a serious debate about the issue and "we need to have the facts."

During his presentation Wednesday, he assured his listeners that
"every piece of information here is scientifically documented." He
said science shows that marijuana is an addictive drug that over time
"has a profound impact on the brain and the body."

Among adults, 9 percent of those who use marijuana will develop an
addiction to it, a number that rises to nearly 30 percent for people
who start using marijuana before the age of 18, he said. Among
youths, marijuana use is tied to poor school performance and in
adults to lower occupational status and higher rates of unemployment, he said.

Kurth said marijuana does have some benefits, particularly in dealing
with chronic pain, but the side effects are so damaging that it
should not be used until its beneficial properties can be distilled
into medications that don't have those side effects.

Kurth's firsthand knowledge of addictive substances was hard-earned.

His great-grandfather settled in Fort Benton in the early 1900s, he
said, but Kurth's father ended up in New Jersey as a Navy man. Kurth
had lots of relatives in Montana, including his cousins in Billings,
among them the actor Wally Kurth and his three brothers and a sister.
Donald Kurth spent so many summers in Montana as a youth that he
became known in the family as the fifth brother, he said.

Kurth, who is 61, said he was already using heroin in high school,
kicked his addiction during a trip to Montana and then started using
again when he was 18 and enrolled at Rocky Mountain College in
Billings. He said he tried LSD for the first time as a Rocky student
and quickly flunked out. After some travels and another stab at
college, he found himself, at the age of 20, facing jail time for
petty larceny and drug possession.

He was tempted to take a jail sentence, which would have meant
serving only a couple of months, but the judge also held out the
option of court-ordered treatment for his heroin addiction. Kurth
chose treatment and ended up in a 27-month program in New York.

"I tell you, I needed to be there for every single minute of it," he said.

After that life-changing experience, Kurth set about remaking his life.

He went on to study medicine at Columbia University and then
completed a fellowship in orthopedic surgery at Oxford.

He did an internship at Johns Hopkins University and trained at the
UCLA Hospital Medical Center, and later became board-certified in
emergency medicine. He also earned a couple of master's degrees, one
in business and another in public administration.

He owns the Urgent Care Center and Alta Loma Medical Group in Rancho
Cucamonga, Calif., about 40 miles east of Los Angeles. In 1994, a
year after he became totally abstinent after quitting drinking, he
ran for city council there. A political opponent made an issue of
Kurth's addictions, he said, and as a result, people started coming
to him for advice on dealing with family members who were substance abusers.

That pushed him into one more area of medicine, and he became
board-certified in addiction medicine. He served as president of the
California Society of Addiction Medicine and has written extensively
on public policy and health care, with an emphasis on substance abuse.

He was elected mayor of Rancho Cucamonga in 2006 and just completed
his four-year term. As mayor, he said, he dealt with numerous
complaints about medical marijuana, which was approved by voter
initiative, as in Montana, in 1996.

The initiative was well-intended, Kurth said, but the consequences
have been negative and far-reaching. He said the atmosphere of
permissiveness regarding marijuana has caused usage rates to climb,
particularly among young people.

Echoing the complaints of opponents of medical marijuana in Montana,
Kurth said, "It wasn't what we expected, and many people who
supported it in an abstract sense have seen the problems with it."
One result of that new awareness, he said, was the defeat last fall
of Proposition 19, which would have legalized the recreational use of
marijuana in California.

Mona Sumner, Rimrock Foundation's chief operations officer, said the
foundation's research backs up Kurth's observations. She said surveys
of students at West and Senior high schools in Billings showed that
during the 2009-10 school year, marijuana was the No. 1 drug of
choice, surpassing alcohol for the first time ever.

"I was pretty shocked," she said, and she believes the trend is a
direct result of the pervasiveness of marijuana since its medicinal
use was approved by Montana voters in 2004.

Kurth said there are some merits to the idea of legalizing and taxing
marijuana and using the proceeds for treatment, but he said he would
never favor legalizing the drug. That doesn't mean people don't have
the right to pass citizen initiatives, he said.

"In a democracy, we can make stupid decisions all we want," he said.