PROSSER COMMITS SUICIDE

Robin Prosser didn't look or sound much like a fighter, but she was.
A mother and a musician, the Missoula woman also acted as Montana's
most outspoken advocate for medical marijuana, the only remedy that
could ease the ravaging pain of the lupus-like immunosuppressive
disease she endured for 23 years. Prosser's fight ended Oct. 18 when
she took her own life.

In recent months, Prosser, 50, would sit at the kitchen table in her
small apartment, pain welling up in her eyes, and talk quietly about
the victories and defeats the last several years had delivered.
Allergic to nearly every pharmaceutical that could render her chronic
pain bearable, she had learned that the political fate of medical
marijuana also carried intensely personal implications.

She remained proud of the 60-day hunger strike she undertook in 2002
to draw attention to the need for medical marijuana, the effort that
first brought her into the public eye. She spoke, too, of her 2004
agreement with the city of Missoula--when police charged her with
marijuana possession following a thwarted suicide attempt--that
deferred prosecution and al lowed her to use marijuana before medical
use was legalized.

During the subsequent campaign for medical marijuana, which won
support from 62 percent of Montana voters, she became a literal
poster child for the effort, appearing in campaign ads. And when the
state issued her a medical marijuana ID card, things seemed to be looking up.

Then in March, federal Drug Enforcement Agency agents seized a small
shipment of medical marijuana in transit from Prosser's
state-approved caregiver. Though she was never criminally charged,
Prosser was crushed. She said caregivers became afraid to supply her
with the medicine she needed so badly.

In July, she penned an op-ed piece in the Billings Gazette, pleading
with Montana's politicians and her fellow citizens to speak out
against the DEA's actions and improve the lives of people like her.

"Give me liberty or give me death," she wrote. "Maybe the next
campaign ought to be for assisted-suicide laws in our state. If they
will not allow me to live in peace, and a little less pain, would
they help me to die, humanely?"