CENSORING MEDICAL MARIJUANA INFORMATION HELPS NO ONE

Recently, local news outlets have reported that Rawlins-area radio
stations KIQZ-FM and KRAL-AM banned public service announcements
dealing with medical marijuana from their airwaves after complaints
from, among others, Rawlins Chief of Police Mike Reed. Censorship of
information about medical marijuana helps no one.

The three PSAs were produced by my organization, the Marijuana Policy
Project. They do not advocate use of marijuana or any drug. They
simply offer information, and present three individuals talking about
personal experiences with medical marijuana: Talk show host Montel
Williams, who suffers from multiple sclerosis; recent U.S. Supreme
Court plaintiff Angel Raich, who suffers from a brain tumor and
several other painful conditions; and novelist Tom Robbins, whose
mother went blind from glaucoma.

In one of the spots, Montel Williams tells listeners, "Like many of
the 1 million people living with multiple sclerosis, I'm in pain every
day. Sometimes my nerves are so raw that if you brush up against me in
an elevator, I want to scream....

"I've tried the strongest prescription painkillers available and they
didn't help. In fact, they left me in a stupor. It was difficult to
work and play with my kids.

"Desperate, I tried medical marijuana. It helped me when other drugs
failed."

This is reality. It's what we hear every day from patients all across
America -- patients far less famous than Montel Williams. So just what
was it that the police chief and two radio stations found so
threatening?

Chief Reed told one newspaper reporter, "this [marijuana] is a gateway
drug into harder drugs." This is precisely the sort of misinformation
that our PSAs were designed to clear up. As Williams so eloquently
explains, medical marijuana often allows patients to reduce or
eliminate their use of narcotics that are far more toxic and addictive
than marijuana. And numerous independent scientists -- including the
prestigious Institute of Medicine, in a White House-commissioned
report -- have verified that there is no evidence that marijuana
causes users to turn to hard drugs.

The Associated Press story quotes Scott Freeman, an ad salesman for
the stations, as saying, "it was not the practice of this station to
promote that type of thing because it was illegal." Putting aside the
oddness of an ad salesman speaking for the station about broadcast
policies, Freeman's statement is puzzling.

Does he really mean that his stations refuse to broadcast any
discussion of whether a current law is right or wrong? That it's
somehow wrong to ask whether our present laws make sense or need to be
changed? How on earth would our democracy function if such questions
can't be aired and discussed openly?

In any case, he is clearly in a minority in the world of radio. Our
PSAs have aired over 11,000 times on radio stations all over the
country, from Washington, D.C. and Honolulu to Lubbock, Texas and
Durango, Colorado.

Freeman and Reed seem to regard medical marijuana as a fringe issue,
but it's not. In November 2004, 62% of Montana voters endorsed that
state's medical marijuana initiative, which is now law. A total of 11
states now protect medical marijuana patients from arrest and jail,
and a November 2005 Gallup poll put national support for such measures
at an astounding 78 percent.

That support comes from the medical community as well as the general
public. A long list of medical and public health organizations,
including the American Public Health Association, the American Nurses
Association, the American Academy of HIV Medicine and many others,
have endorsed laws to permit medical use of marijuana under physician
supervision.

This is an important discussion. KIQZ-FM and KRAL-AM have done their
listeners a disservice by banning it from their airwaves.

Bruce Mirken is director of communications for the Washington, D.C.-
based Marijuana Policy Project, www.mpp.org.