WOULDA COULDA SHOULDA

1. Implications of the Vioxx Verdict

It took a Texas jury only a day and a half to decide to sock it to Merck on
behalf of Carol Ernst, a widow whose 59-year-old Vioxx-taking husband died
of a heart attack in 2001. Texas has a protect-the-corporations cap, so the
$253 million total award will be reduced to $26 million, which will then be
appealed. Merck shares have fallen 10% on news of the verdict.

Merck had chosen the venue, deep in the heart of Tom Delay country, and the
case, in which the autopsy listed the cause of death as irregular
heartbeat. (Clinical trials had linked Vioxx to heart attacks, strokes and
blood clots; irregular heartbeat can have other origins.) The jury saw
right through Merck's lies. They set punitive damages at $229 million -the
exact amount Merck execs calculated they'd save by delaying for a few
months a warning on the Vioxx label about cardiovascular risks.

Merck killed 19 times as many Americans with their Vioxx than the 9/11
hijackers did with their planes. (David Graham, MD, of the FDA, projected
55,000 deaths and 85,000 disabling injuries.) And the harm was inflicted
intentionally! Early clinical trials had alerted Merck executives to the
fact that Vioxx caused coronary damage.

Their response was to exclude from future trials anyone with a history of
heart trouble.

Once Vioxx was on the market, Merck suppressed indications that it was
causing strokes and heart attacks at twice the normal rate in people who
used it for 18 months or more.

The jurors who found for Carol Ernst against Merck were speaking for the
American people, who have become totally hip to the pharmaceutical
companies in recent years. "Respect us, that's the message," a juror
Derrick Chizer, told the media. "Respect us." Forewoman Marsha Robbins
said, "We expect accountability, we expect them to be open with us, we
expect them to be honest with us." Merck's response, according to the Wall
St. Journal: "The board is mulling whether to put Vioxx back on the market
partly to blunt plaintiff attorneys' ammunition."

Marijuana is literally and figuratively an alternative to Vioxx. The
medical marijuana movement has contributed -and could contribute much
more-to exposing and discrediting the pharmaceutical industry.

Doctors in the Society of Cannabis Clinicians report that a large
percentage of their patients define their progress in terms of which
pharmaceutical drugs they can do without (avoiding adverse side effects
and, often, great expense). "How's your back pain?" the doctor will ask.
"I'm getting away with half as many Vicodin," the patient will respond.

Dennis Peron's famous line -"In a country where they give Prozac to shy
teenagers, all marijuana use is medical"- was not some sophistry trick to
achieve legalization, it was a putdown of the pharmaceutical industry and a
challenge to the medical establishment and to a rightwing culture that
"medicalizes" problems that are basically economic. Dennis had interviewed
thousands of people seeking to use marijuana for medical reasons, and
determined that they all had rationales at least as compelling as the
rationale for being treated with a Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. For his
brilliant and forward-moving generalization, Dennis took an endless ration
of shit. To this day, in the high-level chatrooms, reform honchos bemoan
Dennis's line (truncating it, although they know better, to "all use is
medical").

If the reform leaders had not taken offense at Dennis's line in '96, if
they had drawn him out instead of trying to silence him, if they had acted
on the implications of his Prozac riff and publicized marijuana as a safe
alternative to pharmaceuticals with their damaging (unto death)
side-effects, maybe the public in 2005 would be giving the medical
marijuana movement some credit for exposing Merck et al as greed-driven
pushers of deadly products.

And maybe the public would not be surprised by footage of seemingly
able-bodied young men emerging from cannabis dispensaries... But the
less-radical leaders acted as if Dennis was a loose cannon, a "character"
who had outworn his usefulness. The crucial thing to remember about Ethan
Nadelmann and Bill Zimmerman, the "campaign professional" installed to
replace Dennis, is that they would have preferred an initiative resembling
the Vasconcellos bill of '94 and '95 which limited to four the conditions
for which doctors could authorize marijuana use. They assumed it would have
been an easier sell. The pros from Dover glommed on to Prop 215 too late
to veto "...any other condition for which marijuana provides relief;" but
they kept such wording out of the initiatives they wrote and promoted in
other states.

Dennis's instinct was to break out of the single-issue trap. He had said
all along he wanted Prop 215 to be a step towards something bigger -MUCH
bigger than the "legalization" goal that the Drug Warriors accuse the
medical-marijuana advocates of pursuing. "This isn't about marijuana, this
is about America, it's about how we treat each other as people," he kept
saying during the Prop 215 campaign.

He said that whatever we achieved would be the legacy of all his friends
who had died in the epidemic.

After 215 passed he was in a double bind. He had built the prototype
"buy-low, sell-high" cannabis club model, but he didn't see how that model
could lead to social change.

2. Dispensaries Get P.R. Conscious

The following email was sent on behalf of the Drug Policy Alliance by Dale
Gieringer of California NORML:

SUPPORT NEEDED FOR SF MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARIES

The SF Board of Supervisors is being deluged with complaints against MMJ
dispensaries through an organized campaign led by neighborhood
activists. Their aim is to pressure the Board to push a tough
anti-dispensary ordinance. In order to resist this effort, we need allies
from outside the MJ community who are willing to speak up in favor of the
clubs. It would be particularly helpful to enlist supportive businesses,
neighborhood groups and health care professionals.

Please let us know if you are aware of any 'outside' supporters of
dispensaries from S.F. who would be willing to voice their support. We are
aiming to organize a campaign in favor of the dispensaries. Please
circulate among friends in the SF area.

This effort would not be necessary now if the clubs had been relating
differently to their customers (aka "the patients") all along. I don't
mean that they should have been "providing social services" (the phrase
makes my skin crawl) which some are now trying to do. I mean treating
people as comrades in a political/educational struggle for the
consciousness of America. At Dennis's club the primary transaction was
political/educational. In the early-to-mid-1990s seven thousand people got
cards there at a time when getting one was a subversive act in and of
itself. Then the place became Prop 215 headquarters. Even DP's misbegotten
run for governor in '97 meant that 1444 Market was a political beehive.

You couldn't get upstairs without passing the literature/petition counter
on the mezzanine.

What I'm really talking about, though, is unquantifiable -a vibe, a mood in
the air. At 1444 Market the nature of the dialogue between staff and
patrons and between patrons and patrons usually touched on our new
collective discovery: marijuana has beneficial medical effects for an
amazing range of conditions! And I bet a proper clinical trial would reveal
that political action has antidepressant and other beneficial health effects.)

At very few of the clubs today is politics in the air. The transactions at
the counter are overwhelmingly commercial. You might say Well, the times
are different, the freshness of our discovery is gone. It isn't. Tashkin's
cancer study, the role of CBD, the marketing of Sativex, the rescheduling
fight, the busts, all the news that interests you and me would interest a
significant fraction of cannabis dispensary patrons if it was laid on them
in the right way. That's the role that I thought a paper could play. I
told Ethan Nadelmann in December '96 as he started tritzing off to the
other states (anointed by the NYT as our leader) that we needed a paper to
sustain the movement in California.

Organizing the dispensary patrons might have lessened the need to fight a
NIMBY backlash in another way: the more responsibility people feel towards
the movement, the less they'll tolerate loitering by knuckleheads, and some
of the knuckleheads would have been transformed, just from having been
treated with intellectual respect, into better citizens.

The medical marijuana movement woulda coulda shoulda (maybe still can,
although the forces of reaction have the momentum now) sought to educate
and organize the thousands of dispensary patrons into a political force
working towards healthcare reform in the community at large.

Some of the NIMBYs might even have turned into allies if the nearby club
had, for example, been involved in a serious campaign to prevent the
pollution of San Francisco's once pristine water supply with chloramine.
Why shouldn't that be "our issue," too?

Oregon Honors Leveque

Phil Leveque, the Oregon doctor who unstintingly authorized cannabis use by
patients in the early days following legalization, when almost all his
colleagues were afraid to do so, has received a bill from the State Board
of Medical Examiners to pay for his own prosecution. The bill is for
$21,127.10. Leveque's license was suspended for three months in 2002
because he hadn't been conducting physicals (which were not explicitly
required) or keeping records (for security reasons). The Board created "the
Leveque Rule," insisting on physical exams, and Leveque hired a physician's
assistant to conduct them when he resumed practice. But his license was
suspended again in December 2004, and revoked earlier this year.

Leveque has appealed the revocation of his license by the Board. You'd
think this would stay the hounds. "If you fail to send payment in full or
make other arrangements, we may issue a lien on all of your property, both
real and personal.

We may then record the lien with your county and/or execute on the warrant.

This means we can garnish your wages, your bank accounts, or seize your
property to pay the debt in full." Leveque is 82, recently widowed, a World
War II combat infantryman with a heroic record. Oregon thanks you, Dr. Leveque!