REEFER MADNESS 2007

The People Want Medical Marijuana, but Uncle Sam Is Hooked on Demonizing Weed

Someone has been telling lies about Mary J.

Take, for example, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's
position paper on medical marijuana
(www.usdoj.gov/dea/marijuana_position.html). The lies are so blatant
and self-serving that if there were any political leadership in this
country, the DEA's bloated budget would be frozen immediately while
it undergoes investigation into whether the public that pays its $2.5
billion budget and employs its 11,000 workers is best served by the
agency's current policies and practices.

The DEA medical marijuana document is so fraught with "Reefer
Madness" era lies and obfuscation that it would be laughable were it
not coming from a Justice Department agency that wields such
unchecked power over the lives of the citizens who pay its bills, and
if its regressive policies were not denying a better quality of life
for the thousands - and perhaps millions - of Americans who could
find relief through legal prescription marijuana.

Oh, you believe what the DEA says, that there is no such thing as
medical marijuana, that it's all just a hippie ploy to legalize
recreational use?

Then you must have been living under the same rock as the DEA.

"You see living, breathing, walking, rolling evidence right here,"
said wheelchair-bound Jacki Rickert as she and three other medical
marijuana patients spoke at the state Capitol during the Sept. 18
introduction of the Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act, a new
Assembly medical marijuana bill named for Rickert.

"If you took anyone who is against medical marijuana and made them
deal with what Jacki has to deal with for just five minutes, they'd
be balled up in a fetal position sobbing uncontrollably," said Gary
Storck, a Madison medical marijuana advocate who works with Rickert
in Is My Medicine Legal YET? (a not-for-profit organization created
to provide information and education about the therapeutic use of
cannabis, www.immly.org). "Jacki is so strong and proud. She hurts
but doesn't show it. That's why it's so fitting the act is being
named after her."

Rickert suffers from Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and advanced reflex
sympathetic dystrophy. She is also a stroke survivor. Many drugs have
been prescribed for her conditions over the years, even Marinol, the
expensive Food and Drug Administration-approved synthetic marijuana
pill that many patients complain does not provide the relief of the
real herb, and often has nasty side effects.

"I took Marinol with a very open mind," Rickert told the small
audience of press and fellow medical marijuana advocates at the
Capitol ceremony last month. "You wouldn't have to go through all
this crap if you could just take a pill. It didn't work. My tongue
swelled in my face."

Rickert is actually eligible for marijuana the federal government
grows at the University of Mississippi and dispenses freely to a
handful of patients under the Compassionate Use New Drug Program.

Rickert was approved for participation in the program in 1990, which
would have provided her with 300 joints of federal schwag every month
at no cost.

But the government dragged its feet on her application and those of
others who tried to get in on the federal marijuana program, and in
1992 Bush I pulled the plug on the program for all but those few
already receiving free government pot (see sidebar on George McMahon,
one of the five surviving federal pot recipients). Bush I felt
providing free, low-grade government pot to sick people would send
the wrong message at a time when the federal government was amping up
its continuing war on drugs.

State Reps. Frank Boyle (D-Superior) and Mark Pocan (D-Madison)
sponsored the Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act with the idea that
putting a human face on the bill might cut through some of the
nonsense that has been dispensed about the therapeutic uses of cannabis.

"I do think naming this for Jacki focuses the attention to a single
individual who has been fighting her entire life to survive with this
debilitating neurological disease," Boyle said. "The pain can only be
relieved, she has found, by using marijuana. To deny her, this woman
in a wheelchair, a solution to her pain is unconscionable, absolutely
unconscionable. She is the perfect person for this."

Pocan said the Rickert Act is modeled after medical marijuana laws
that have passed in 12 other states - Alaska, California, Colorado,
Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon,
Rhode Island and Washington.

"What this bill essentially does, it provides a medical defense to
marijuana-related prosecutions and property seizure actions," he
said. "It doesn't change federal law, however, 99% of the arrests are
at the local and state level."

Former state Rep. Tammy Baldwin - now representing Wisconsin in the
U.S. House of Representatives - first introduced a medical marijuana
bill in the state Assembly in 1993. A version of the bill has been
introduced in every session since then, but it has never made it out
of committee, and, so, most lawmakers have not had to go on record
about where they stand on medical marijuana (see sidebar on the House
Health Committee, where the new medical marijuana bill will likely
end up), and resulting public input on the question has never been
sought by the legislative body.

"We need a public hearing," Boyle said. "We've never been allowed a
legitimate legislative hearing, and that's absolutely intolerable."

Longtime Madison marijuana activist Ben Masel says it is the stigma
of recreational marijuana that keeps legislators from acting on
medical marijuana.

"I don't think it's so much opposition as fear to be on record for,"
he said. "Plenty of members of the Legislature have been telling me
for years, 'If you ever get it to a vote you'll get my vote, but
you'll have to get someone else to push it that far.' It's mostly a
political fear."

Boyle agrees there is a distinct lack of political backbone.

"We've been trying to get this message across for 10 years," he said.
"We've had endorsements from editors around the state. Still, we have
a legislative body that is running scared. They function by
moral/political expediency, they don't function by what is right.
That's a sad statement, but I think it's true."

And he fears the Assembly still is not ready to address medical marijuana.

"We've picked up a dozen co-sponsors on the bill, but with a
Republican-controlled Assembly, we will not have a hearing on
anything," he said. "The Assembly has met 13 times since January. We
are the most do-nothing group of elected officials in the history of
this state.

"The Health Committee chair has already said, absolutely not," he
said. "This won't happen in the Assembly. It's got to come from the Senate."

Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton) agrees the state Senate should be
involved in the medical marijuana issue, so has scheduled an
informational hearing on the subject for next month under the
auspices of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee that he
chairs (10:30 a.m. Nov. 14 in Room 411 South of the Capitol, but that
was only tentative at press time).

Because marijuana has been so stigmatized in the federal war on
drugs, Erpenbach said an informational hearing is needed before
legislation is introduced in the Senate in order to open some minds
to the facts about marijuana as medicine.

"I think there are a lot of misperceptions out there about medical
marijuana," he said. "This is the first time I've actually chaired
the health committee, but I've always wanted to hold an informational
meeting on it."

Erpenbach said the format will include speakers on both sides of the
issues presenting their views before the hearing is opened for public comment.

"The whole idea is to get the idea out there," he said. "I think if
we just introduced a bill without shining some light on it first, it
would be a little more difficult to pass legislation."

Erpenbach said he has been keeping abreast of medical marijuana
issues by talking with Gary Storck, an internationally recognized
medical marijuana advocate and 35-year user of medical marijuana.

"Most of us would be in a box right now if it weren't for cannabis,"
Storck said. "It's about legalizing it for people who are really ill.
I don't think there's anybody could look Jacki (Rickert) in the face
and say, 'No, you shouldn't smoke medical marijuana'."

Storck, of Madison, works with Rickert in IMMLY and is co-founder of
both the Wisconsin and Madison NORML organizations.

"I was born with glaucoma and stared losing my sight at an early
age," he said. "I went to see my eye doctor on Oct. 3, 1972, after
having some marijuana as a high school senior of 17. He was very
pleased to find my eye pressure was normal, whereas it was usually
elevated. But I didn't tell him why because I was nervous about it.
I've been a medical marijuana patient for 35 years now, since I could
first document that it could help me." As a tireless activist, Storck
said he hears from patients around the state.

"I hear some really sad stories of people who just can't get it, like
multiple sclerosis patients," he said. "It's a very valuable remedy
for MS. I've worked with a number of MS patients over the year."

One of those MS patients was at the introduction of the Rickert Act.
Carolyn McDonough of Sun Prairie is 21 years old and she arrived at
the Capitol for the unveiling of the Rickert Act with her seeing-eye
service dog. McDonough was stricken with MS two years ago and lost
her vision and mobility, until smoking medical marijuana.

"If you had a 19-year-old daughter who was in pain every day, what
would you do to help?" she said during the bill's introduction. "You
could be put on five different drugs three times a day every day,
like I was. Or you can take pot, and now I'm on two drugs a day."

"To many, this is an illegal drug of use, even thought it's been
scientifically shown to be so medically useful," he said. "There are
literally hundreds of ailments it's good for. Cannabis is really good
for people with muscle spasms. It's good for seizure disorders. It
contains over 60 therapeutically active cannabinoids, with a handful
of those being more important. One of them is a pain reliever and it
protects your brain from trauma or stroke. There's no medication on
the market that will do that. It's an anti-oxidant and
anti-inflammatory. It's very useful for neuropathic pain like
diabetics get, pain that opiates just won't touch. Another irony
about it all, if you are also taking opiate pain medications,
cannabis and opiates work together so you can get superior relief
with less sedation. This has been medically documented. The problem
is that many pain doctors or clinics test you for drugs. If you test
positive for cannabis, they will cut you off your opiate pain meds.
They get downright barbaric."

While Storck says progress is being made in the fight to recognize
legal medical marijuana, that doesn't help those suffering now and in the past.

"Things are better than they've ever been, but when one patient is at
risk of being arrested or one patient won't break the law to get
their medicine or one patient can't even find a joint, it's still
wrong," he said. "We pride ourselves on having such a great health
care system and then we turn our backs on these people who our great
health care system can't help because their medications are too
toxic. It's really a national shame."

Storck said a 2002 IMMLY poll found 80.3% support statewide for
medical marijuana. A separate poll conducted by Chamberlain Research
Consultants found 75.7% support.

"People aren't doing anything to demonstrate that support," Storck
said. "They need to call their legislators and keep calling them. Let
them know. Send them information. When they see them in public, say
they support this. When candidates come looking for their vote, tell
them they support this and they need to support it if they want their vote."

[sidebar]

HEALTH COMMITEE MEMBERS SILENT ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA

The Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act will likely be sent to the
Assembly Health and Health Care Reform Committee. Bill sponsor Rep.
Frank Boyle fears the bill will be buried in the Republican-dominated
panel, without a public hearing and without its 13 members ever going
on record for or against medical marijuana.

We polled the members for their views, and got a phone call from Rep.
Wieckert's office explaining that the bill would have to go through
the normal process, and an e-mail from Rep. Sheldon Wasserman, a
Milwaukee Democrat, who wrote:

"Thank you for the e-mail message asking my opinion on legislation to
allow medical marijuana use in Wisconsin. I have attended forums on
the subject of medical marijuana in the past and done some research
of my own. However, I am still undecided as to whether Wisconsin
should pass a law allowing the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

I am therefore looking forward to participating in legislative
hearings on the subject, if a bill is introduced this session."

Chairwoman Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa), a registered nurse, is already
on record against medical marijuana, as quoted in the April 10, 2007
edition of the Wisconsin State Journal: "I will refuse to put members
through the circus of a hearing for a bill that is not going to go
anywhere. This is nothing more than a backdoor attempt to legalize
marijuana, which is not going to happen on my watch."

If you would like to know where the individual committee members (two
of whom are from our area, Rep. Steve Wieckert of Appleton and Rep.
Frank Lasee of Green Bay) stand on the medical marijuana issue, you
should ask them yourselves. Here's how:

Chairwoman Rep. Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwautosa), 608-266-9180,
608-282-3614 (fax), Rep.Vukmir@legis.wisconsin.gov

Rep. Terry Moulton (R-Chippewa Falls), 608-266-9172, 608-282-3668 (fax),

Rep.Moulton@legis.wisconsin.gov

Rep. Frank Lasee (R-Green Bay), 608-266-9870, (920-406-9488
(district), 608-282-3602 (fax), Rep.Lasee@legis.wisconsin.gov

Rep. Steve Wieckert (R-Appleton), 608-266-3070, 920-731-3000
(district), 608-282-3657 (fax), Rep.Wieckert@legis.wisconsin.gov

Rep. Patricia Strachota (R-West Bend), 608-264-8486, 608-282-3658 (fax),

Rep.Strachota@legis.wisconsin.gov

Rep. Scott Newcomer (R-Hartland), 888-529-0033, 608-282-3633 (fax),

Rep.Newcomer@legis.wisconsin.gov

Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette), 608-266-2343, Rep.Nygren@legis.wisconsin.gov

Rep. Rich Zipperer (R-Pewaukee) 608-266-5120,

Rep.Zipperer@legis.wisconsin.gov

Rep. Sheldon Wasserman (D-Milwaukee), 888-534-0022, 608-282-3622 (fax),

Rep.Wasserman@legis.wisconsin.gov

Rep. Jennifer Shilling (D-La Crosse), 888-534-0095, 608-282-3695 (fax),

Rep.Shilling@legis.wisconsin.gov

Rep. Amy Sue Vruwink, (D-Milladore), 888-534-0070, 608-282-3670 (fax),

Rep.Vruwink@legis.wisconsin.gov

Rep. Charles Benedict (D-Beloit), 608-266-9967, 608-282-3645 (fax),

Rep.Benedict@legis.wisconsin.gov

Rep. Donna Seidel (D-Wausau), 888-534-0085, 608-282-3685 (fax),

Rep.Seidel@legis.wisconsin.gov