Rx WARS

The Nether World of Fed-State Bureaucracy Makes Access to Marijuana
No Easy Feat

"Patients are under attack," argued Nathan Sands, a patients-rights
advocate at Compassionate Coalition who's fed up with the feds going
after medicinal-marijuana users in California. "There's a lot of
collusion between state and federal governments. States have no more
power," and as a result patients with multiple sclerosis, AIDS,
cancer, glaucoma and arthritis are being arrested.

More than 100 federal charges against medicinal-marijuana patients
have been documented since 2001 by the California branch of the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. When the
federal government arrests a patient or cannabis-dispensary owner,
local, state and county governments either assist in the arrest or
concede to the fed's higher power. The problem, according to Sands,
is that state governments receive funding from the Drug Enforcement
Administration, earmarked for the War on Drugs. Budgets are tight and
cities and counties are strapped for cash as is, so they cooperate
with the federal government--to the detriment of patients.

The state Legislature passed Senate Bill 420 in 2003 to create the
option for counties to institute ID cards to protect cannabis
patients from arrest--though, as a compromise, the law limits the
amount of marijuana patients can have on hand to eight dried ounces,
in addition to six mature or 12 immature plants. The California state
Board of Equalization collects taxes on cannabis dispensaries, but
because of a ruling this past April, the state does not require
dispensaries to declare the source of their income. Still, patients
like 35-year-old Sacramentan Ryan Landers face myriad hardships--and
legal consequences.

Landers, state director of the American Alliance for Medical
Cannabis, has long used medicinal marijuana to combat nausea and
appetite loss brought about by AIDS, as well as to alleviate the side
effects of the prescription drugs he uses. In 1997, however, Landers
was charged with smoking in public in downtown Sacramento and for
carrying a scant .04 grams of marijuana--not much, considering that
possession of up to an ounce is punishable by a maximum $100 fine.

Landers, a state-approved medicinal-marijuana patient, had to go to
court to defend himself. "The head of a major narcotics office
actually had already sent a letter [dismissing my case] to my
attorney," Landers explained of his day in court. "We were at city
hall discussing dispensaries, and the entire time [the official]
never mentioned the fact that he had sent a letter to my attorney
dropping the charges."

But this was just the beginning for Landers.

Specifically, Landers is frustrated with the federal government's
policy on marijuana research. He cites, for example, a prescription
drug called Marinol, which is a synthetic form of THC (the active
ingredient in marijuana). Marinol, which didn't work for Landers or
his friends, is intended to induce the same nausea- and pain-abating
effects as marijuana the herb, but the very existence of Marinol,
Landers said, opens a bag of worms.

"If marijuana has no medicinal value whatsoever, why would you have
Marinol be a prescription?" he argued, citing the obvious fact that
if the feds don't recognize the natural form of THC in marijuana the
plant, how can they justify the medicinal use of its synthetic counterpart.

Landers' frustrations with research were echoed by Dale Gieringer of
the California branch of the NORML. Gieringer, who holds a Ph.D. in
engineering economic systems, discovered that smoking out of a
vaporizer--a device that burns the THC off marijuana without burning
the plant matter itself--produced no detectable carcinogens. The
presence of lung-damaging carcinogens was one reason the DEA frowned
on medicinal marijuana, he said.

"We looked at literally hundreds of components in marijuana smoke and
the vaporizer delivered pretty much 95 percent THC," Gieringer said.
"Rather than getting hundreds of junk compounds, you just get
medically active ones," as with the use of Marinol.

Further studies, however, have met an impasse. Gieringer said his
research was only possible because of legal loopholes that have since
been blocked by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the DEA has
turned down his requests to import marijuana from the Netherlands.
"They complain that smoking marijuana is inappropriate for medicine,
yet block vaporizer research," Gieringer said. "Basically when it
comes to marijuana, there's no such thing as freedom of research in
the United States. Marijuana research is in the dark ages."

Part of the federal government's reluctance to legalize medical
marijuana may stem from the fear that cannabis dispensaries serve as
an additional source for recreational marijuana. But marijuana use
among teenagers actually has dropped since the implementation of
Proposition 215, Landers said, citing a 2006 study conducted by the
Marijuana Policy Project and Mitch Earleywine, a professor at the
State University of New York. The study showed that teenage marijuana
use had gone down by as much as 50 percent in states that had
legalized medicinal marijuana. California, for its part, saw a 47
percent reduction in marijuana use among ninth graders.

"Kids don't want to smoke their grandma's medicine," Landers offered.

This is not to say that younger individuals won't use marijuana for
medicinal purposes. Consider Nadine (who asked that her real name not
be used), who began feeling pain in her joints in high school. When
the pain worsened, she saw her doctor, who told her she could choose
between rowing and playing the piano. She chose rowing--and the pain
grew so bad that she found herself using crutches at 16. It turned
out Nadine suffered from fibromyalgia, a chronic condition known for
pain it causes in tendons, ligaments and muscles.

Nadine moved from her native Berkeley and enrolled at UC Davis to
study neurobiology and psychology. She no longer needed crutches, but
the pain wasn't going away and prescription medicines brought about
their own problems. While in Holland in 2003, Nadine smoked
marijuana, she said, and found that it assuaged the symptoms.

"A lot of the stuff that my doctor was prescribing me was making me
feel pretty fuzzy-headed," she said. She spoke to a friend, who in
turn put her in touch with a cannabis dispensary. She underwent a
background check of her medical history and was granted an ID. After
three months of medicinal-marijuana use, the pain abated to manageable levels.

Nadine hasn't experienced any trouble with law enforcement ... yet.
She'd rather purchase marijuana at a cannabis dispensary; she trusts
them. "With the establishment I went to, it was really clear they had
the needs of the patient in mind," she said. "I felt like it was a
lot safer and a lot more cost-effective in terms of the quality." As
a result of her treatment, Nadine said she's active in ways she could
not be on her prescribed medication.

"I wish people would realize it's not just something people do
recreationally. It has value and it has merit. It keeps it so that I
can stay productive for my life.