FELONS WHO WANT MEDICAL MARIJUANA PUT STATE IN AWKWARD POSITION

Several times a week for the past two years, felons on supervision
have asked the Department of Corrections for special permission to use
medical marijuana.

Some of the requests, which are signed by doctors, are vague, listing
just "chronic pain" as the reason for the drug. But others describe
agony: anorexia from AIDS or chronic vomiting from
chemotherapy.

As regular as rain, the state's Department of Corrections (DOC) has
turned down nearly all of them. Out of 320 requests, seven people have
gotten permission -- a select group that includes a forger wasting away
from AIDS and a white-haired grandmother named Kathy Parkins with
fibromyalgia.

Squeezed by conflicting duties of policing felons while not meddling
with their medical treatment, the agency has been swept into the
complex and ongoing debate about the state's 12-year-old,
voter-approved medical-marijuana law.

The pressure on the DOC to permit felons to use medical marijuana is
likely to intensify as the medical-pot industry flourishes and polls
show public opinion increasingly favoring legalization. New patients
are being authorized by the day, and dozens of new marijuana
dispensaries are eager to serve them.

The state is even getting in on the action, announcing earlier this
month an attempt to tax medical-marijuana retail sales. Advocates for
medical pot estimate at least 100,000 patients statewide are approved
for its use and about 5,000 people make their living off medicinal
pot.

"Authorization Mills"?

The lifeblood of the industry are the doctors' notes recommending
medical pot for specific patients. Possession of marijuana is still
illegal, but a note provides a valid defense if a patient is
criminally charged.

A small but frustrated group of advocates, attorneys, physicians and
patients says DOC is ignoring the state medical-marijuana law by
substituting its judgment for that of doctors who recommend the drug.
The policy, they say, is ripe for a legal challenge, although none has
been filed.

DOC takes a jaundiced view toward many of those notes recommending
medical marijuana. A vast majority of recommendations for DOC
offenders come from just three or four clinics that are pot-friendly
"authorization mills," according to the agency.

"Frankly, most mainstream clinicians tend to gravitate toward
traditional and conventional treatments, rather than marijuana," said
Dr. Steve Hammond, DOC's chief doctor.

Doug Hiatt, a Seattle attorney who represents medical-marijuana
patients, said DOC "is playing doctor, and they're doing a bad job of
it. They're messing around with sick people's medications. It's sickening."

For a decade after passage of the 1998 initiative, medical marijuana
was a side issue at DOC.

The law prohibits medicinal pot in prisons. Those on post-prison
supervision found corrections officers sometimes ignored positive drug
tests if the offender had a doctor's recommendation.

In 2008, the law was changed to expand the type of medical
professionals who can recommend marijuana, and to clarify how much pot
a patient can possess. That prompted a boom in clinics that authorize
medical marijuana -- and in requests from DOC offenders to use it.

That has put DOC field officers in a bind: Do they uphold no-drug
provisions in criminal sentences and prioritize a duty to help
offenders stay clean? Or do they show mercy to sick offenders with
doctors' recommendations and follow the medical-marijuana law?

There's one more concern: The oft-sued agency fears it could be liable
if an offender on supervision were to hurt someone while high on
DOC-approved pot.

Scott Blonien, a DOC assistant secretary, laid out the quandary in an
e-mail to other DOC managers in 2008. What if an offender with
advanced AIDS who had a doctor's note for medical marijuana tested
positive for pot in a drug test?

"This person's possession and use is not against state law. Should DOC
still violate this offender for action that our state Legislature
recognized was necessary, for 'humanitarian reasons?' " according to
the e-mail, which was obtained by the advocacy group Cannabis Defense
Coalition. "Do we really want to die on this hill?"

After internal debate, DOC took a firm law-and-order line. Since July
2008, 320 offenders have requested waivers, which are reviewed by
Hammond but subject to appeal within DOC.

Waivers are not needed for prescriptions for Marinol, a synthetic form
of THC -- the active ingredient in marijuana -- approved by the Food and
Drug Administration to treat nausea and appetite loss.

Hammond has approved just one request; six others were OK'd on
appeal.

Seeking a Balance

Blonien said the policy is the right balance between compassion and
accountability, especially because most of the requests for waivers
come from offenders with drug histories.

"It is a very difficult position the department is in," he said. "The
public expects us to help these folks return to the community, and to
protect the public. It is just incongruent for us to allow some to use
marijuana when it led to the criminality in the first place."

Dr. Scott Havsy, a Tacoma physician, protested when DOC denied his
patient's use of marijuana to treat "intractable pain" from multiple
herniated discs, a diagnosis included under the state law.

"The Department of Corrections takes the statute and modifies it
themselves," said Havsy. "That is just wrong. They're not following
the law."

To get around the DOC, some offenders have quietly asked their
sentencing judge to change the terms of supervision to allow medicinal
marijuana.

As the offenders' requests have flowed in, Hammond and other DOC staff
took note of a handful of doctors who signed one recommendation after
another.

Among the most prolific is Dr. Mohammad H. Said, a licensed physician
in Ephrata. He said he has signed 20 notes for DOC patients, a small
part of his estimated 8,000 authorizations since mid-2008.

Said estimates that he has worked for 10 different clinics that
specialize in authorizing medical marijuana, spending 15 minutes or so
with each patient. Patients pay about $150 for a recommendation.

Said, who was disciplined by the Department of Health in 2008 for
overprescribing narcotics, said he doesn't use pot himself. But he
said it has proved benefits, including providing more "domestic
tranquillity" than alcohol.

"Ninety percent of my patients have been taking marijuana on their own
for a long time. They just come in to me to make it legal," said Said,
who ran for U.S. Senate in 2010 and governor in 2008.

The state Medical Quality Assurance Commission has investigated five
complaints regarding medical professionals' marijuana recommendations,
with one currently open, which the agency wouldn't discuss. It has not
yet sought to discipline a clinician over medical pot, said Larry
Berg, a staff attorney for the commission.

"We know if these cases go to [disciplinary] action, they will be
under large scrutiny," said Berg.

One Who Got the OK

As one of seven people that DOC has approved for medical marijuana,
Kathy Parkins must comply with just one special condition: Don't drive
while high.

She's fine with that. Parkins, a white-haired, 54-year-old
grandmother, has been legally using marijuana for a decade to treat
symptoms of fibromyalgia, which causes chronic joint and muscle pain.

During a 2008 road trip in Arizona, a drug-sniffing dog at a Border
Patrol checkpoint went nuts on her car. Officers found a quarter-ounce
of pot, as well as cannabis-laced vinaigrette, peanut-butter cups,
bubble bath, blackberry cookies, body lotion and vanilla cake. Parkins
had wrongly been told that Arizona allows medical marijuana.

Troubles Continue

She pleaded guilty to possession in April 2008 -- her first criminal
conviction -- and was sentenced to 36 months of probation. She got her
case transferred back to Washington but was in trouble within weeks:
She failed a DOC urine test for pot, and officers conducting a home
visit found an authorized medical-marijuana growing operation
belonging to another tenant in a house she rented.

Parkins was jailed for a week, and a DOC officer tried to get her sent
back to Arizona based on an inaccurate assertion that she had no
family ties in Washington. DOC backed off as friends and advocates
pressed her case to the governor.

She got a DOC waiver last year and hasn't been drug-tested for
marijuana since. To be safe, she now carries notes from three doctors.

She runs a business from her West Seattle house, supplying
cannabis-laced baked goods and oils to four dispensaries.

Most medical-marijuana patients are truly sick, so DOC would risk
little with a more liberal dose of mercy, she said. "These are not the
normal criminal," said Parkins. "They're mostly housebound."

But DOC is sticking with its policy, said Anmarie Aylward, DOC's
community corrections director. "Until we hear more from taxpayers, I
think we're on the right road," she said.

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WASHINGTON'S MEDICAL-MARIJUANA LAW

Qualifying: A patient must suffer from a "terminal or debilitating
medical condition," such as cancer, HIV, multiple sclerosis,
intractable pain or other illness defined by the state Medical
Quality Assurance Commission. Depression and anxiety do not qualify.

Recommending: A clinician can recommend -- but not prescribe --
marijuana to a patient who has a qualifying condition. Six types of
clinicians, including naturopaths and physician assistants, can make
recommendations, which must be printed on tamper-resistant paper.

Possession: Marijuana possession remains illegal, but a clinician's
recommendation provides an "affirmative defense" in court, meaning a
patient can still be arrested but can use the recommendation form as
a defense. Most prosecutors won't charge patients with valid
recommendations and a 60-day supply or less.

Supply: A qualifying patient can have a 60-day supply, defined as 24
ounces and 15 plants, but patients may exceed those limits with a
proven medical need.

Dispensaries: State law prohibits dispensaries, but it allows
patients to get marijuana from a "designated provider." In the
absence of clarity in the law, dispensaries have opened to act as providers.

Federal law: Marijuana is illegal under federal law, but the U.S.
Justice Department has said it will not target users in compliance
with state medical-marijuana laws.

Source: state Department of Health; ACLU of Washington