SENATOR HUFFS AND PUFFS OVER MARIJUANA BILL

Watching the over-the-top display from one state senator during a
legislative hearing last week made me feel like using a retort favored by
my friends more than 20 years ago:

"You don't have to be a jerk just because you know how."

Of course, we didn't use the word "jerk" back then, but the meaning remains
the same.

The hearing was on legislation that would allow the medical use of
marijuana. Ten states already have a similar law, which would allow people
with debilitating diseases to seek prescriptions for marijuana to control
their symptoms. Even in relatively conservative, Republican Arizona, the
bill was overwhelmingly approved in a voter referendum.

Some could be forgiven for the knee-jerk reaction that the bill is a
back-door attempt to legalize marijuana. But after reading restrictions
included in the legislation and listening to testimony of those who
experience the kind of pain healthy people couldn't even imagine,
thoughtful people should be able to get beyond that.

The first witness last Tuesday was a 42-year-old registered nurse with
multiple sclerosis. The woman described her symptoms. She had never used
marijuana, she said, but would if she could. After the woman answered a few
questions posed by committee members, Sen. Leo R. Blais, R-Coventry, piped up.

Rather than asking a question, Blais used his time to rail against the
legislation as nothing more than an attempt to legalize pot. If it passed,
he said, his voice rising in indignation, everyone who strained their back
raking leaves would be getting marijuana prescriptions. There are plenty of
prescriptive drugs out there to alleviate pain and other symptoms, said
Blais, a pharmacist.

"This will continue to promote drug use in our kids and in our adults,"
Blais railed.

When the bill's sponsor, Sen. Rhoda Perry, D-Providence, pointed out the
safeguards in the bill aimed at preventing misuse, Blais sat there, hiding
a grin behind a raised hand. Minutes later, Blais walked out of the
hearing, having thrown his bomb. He never heard the testimony from three
physicians, including the former head of the psychology and neuroscience
department at Brown University, relating the scientific evidence supporting
the use of marijuana to alleviate symptoms of people with serious diseases
such as cancer, AIDS, epilepsy and multiple sclerosis.

Blais did not hear the testimony that, unlike many of the drugs Blais
himself dispenses, marijuana does not have serious side effects and is not
addictive.

The evidence and personal experience did prompt one committee member to
change his view on the issue. Sen. Michael J. Damiani, D-East Providence, a
retired policeman, opposed the bill last year, but this year signed on as a
co-sponsor. His conversion came after he saw several people close to him
suffer from cancer.

"Anything I can do to make their lives easier ... seems like a good thing
to do," Damiani said.

It seems so logical. If marijuana could ease the vomiting and lack of
appetite for a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy, why not allow it?
If, as described at the hearing, marijuana helps calm the violent tremors
of MS patients, why deny them that relief? If marijuana can ease the pain
and suffering of an end-game AIDS patient, what is the objection? Doctors
prescribe and pharmacists provide far more serious drugs with potentially
harmful side effects to control those symptoms now. And not one doctor came
forward to detail any harmful effects marijuana might have on a patient.

Would legalizing marijuana for medical use, as Blais claims, cause young
people to lurch toward reefer madness? No more so than seeing their parent
take prescription drugs to control their symptoms would push them toward
drug abuse.

One potential side effect, though, just might be compassion for people who
are suffering.