LIES CLOUD MEDICAL MARIJUANA DEBATE

As a legislator, I am used to political disagreements, and I enjoy a
healthy debate. But when a former White House official crisscrosses our
state, deliberately spreading misinformation about a proposal to protect
some of our most vulnerable citizens, that's where I draw the line.

The proposal is House Bill 0407, my bill to permit seriously ill patients
to use medical marijuana without fear of arrest and jail under Illinois
law. It is modeled after 10 existing state laws that are working well and
have received broad support from the public and -- most important -- from
the medical and public health community. Organizations supporting such
legislation include the American Public Health Association, the American
Nurses Association, the Illinois Nurses Association, the state medical
societies of New York, California and Rhode Island, the AIDS Foundation of
Chicago and the American Academy of HIV Medicine -- doctors who specialize
in treating HIV/AIDS -- among many others.

As a person living with AIDS, those last two are particularly important to
me. I know firsthand how tough this disease is to beat.

But Andrea Barthwell, former deputy director of the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy, is telling a different story. She is
crisscrossing Illinois giving a series of lectures claiming that medical
marijuana is "a cruel hoax," not supported by the medical community at all.
To hear Barthwell tell it, I'm the pawn of a sinister cabal of "legalizers"
who "use the pain and suffering of patients" to further their nefarious agenda.

What utter nonsense. Unfortunately, Barthwell has turned down my offer to
debate the issue.

That's a shame, because she has a long history of saying things about
medical marijuana that simply are not true. Interviewed on PBS' "News Hour
With Jim Lehrer" in October 2003, she claimed that "no credible medical
organizations" support medical marijuana. In a Feb. 17, 2004, Chicago
Tribune column, she insisted that "marijuana is so complex, unstable and
harmful that sensible physicians and researchers consider it unethical to
expose individuals to the risks associated with smoking it."

In fact, what the medical community actually says is precisely the opposite
of what Barthwell claims. In its official policy statement on medical
marijuana, the American Public Health Association stated, "Marijuana has an
extremely wide acute margin of safety for use under medical supervision . .
. greater harm is caused by the legal consequences of its prohibition than
possible risks of medicinal use."

In a 1997 editorial, the New England Journal of Medicine -- widely regarded
as the most prestigious medical journal in the world -- called the ban on
medical use of marijuana "misguided, heavy-handed and inhumane."

In a November 2003 letter to New York legislators, the American Academy of
HIV Medicine put it this way: "When appropriately prescribed and monitored,
marijuana/cannabis can provide immeasurable benefits for the health and
well-being of our patients."

And the Illinois Nurses Association, in a position paper issued last
December, said, "Cannabis [marijuana] is considered by the scientists
directly involved with cannabinoid research to be one of the least toxic
substances known that delivers a therapeutic response. . . . There is
almost a half-century of research that supports the safety and efficacy of
cannabis for conditions such as reducing nausea and vomiting, stimulating
appetite, controlling spasticity, decreasing the suffering from the
experience of chronic pain, and controlling seizures."

That's not my opinion. It's the opinion of some of this state's and this
nation's leading health experts, the people who every day do the hard work
of caring for people battling illnesses like cancer, AIDS and multiple
sclerosis.

I welcome an honest debate about my medical marijuana bill, but let's base
that debate on facts, not spin. Illinoisans deserve better than Andrea
Barthwell's travelling con job.