MEDICINAL POT, IT'S A GOOD THING

A FRIEND took me aside the other day and asked if I could get him some
marijuana.

"I'm out," he said. "And it's the only way I can keep any food down."

Since he was asking me, I can only assume he truly was desperate. I haven't
had any pot in at least 25 years, though I can speak to its beneficial
effects on appetite. In college another friend and I set what may still be
an isthmus record of having three different food delivery vehicles arrive
simultaneously at our Carroll Street apartment.

The friend who approached me recently wasn't laughing. He's been sick,
seriously ill, and a side effect of the illness and its treatments is a
loss of appetite. It's a bad cycle. He needs his strength to get better but
he can't keep down the food that would make him stronger. The marijuana
would help him eat.

I promised to try to help, though I didn't really have anyone to call. I
also realized, to my chagrin, that I was a little nervous about having any
conversation in which I was trying to procure an illegal drug.

That would make a nice headline for my kids to read, wouldn't it?

My next thought, and I realize it is not original, was this: How have we
come to this lunacy?

As a population we can legally drink alcohol until we puke on our shoes,
and our livers look like one of Bo Ryan's practice balls. Or pop
prescription mood pills until our eyes permanently glaze over.

But I'm scared to make a phone call for a mild little drug that could help
a sick friend.

That's not going to change, either. Not as long as most lawmakers wake up
every morning with one overriding thought: What can I do today to help get
myself re-elected?

Can you imagine the negative campaign ads that would be unleashed on a
politician who tried to talk rationally about why legalizing marijuana
might make sense?

But to help my friend's suffering, it doesn't have to be legal, in the way
that a bottle of gin is legal. It just needs to be legal for medicinal reasons.

By coincidence, as I was thinking these deep thoughts - which happens
rarely in this space, and I assure readers we will return to fun and
frivolity without undue delay -- I received a note saying that Jacki
Rickert is scheduled to be in Madison next week for a benefit at the
Cardinal Bar.

Not only that, Rickert is in the process of moving to Madison, in part to
be closer to the State Capitol, where she has lobbied in the past.

Rickert is the Wisconsin woman who could serve as a worldwide symbol of the
cruelty and stupidity of the government's stance on medical marijuana.

Rickert, who is in her early 50s, suffers from Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and
reflexive sympathetic dystrophy, bone and muscle diseases that keep her in
constant pain and often unable to eat. She is in a wheelchair and weighs
less than 100 pounds.

Marijuana helped both to ease the pain and to give her some appetite. In
1990, Rickert was approved entry into a federal program that dispensed
medical marijuana.

Once in the program, patients received 300 pre-rolled marijuana cigarettes
along with instructions on how to smoke them and orders not to accept
marijuana from any other source.

There was one other requirement: Rickert, who was living in Mondovi in
Buffalo County, had to provide her physician a safe weighing at least 700
pounds for storing the marijuana until it was transferred to Rickert. While
Jacki's family was arranging for the safe, the administration of George
Bush the elder terminated the medical marijuana program. Patients already
in the program were grandfathered in -- Jacki Rickert, not yet officially
enrolled, was out.

Rickert struggled, suffered and found marijuana where she could. Then a
little over four years ago the Mondovi police raided Rickert's home and
spent 10 hours inside. They confiscated some pipes and baggies of
marijuana. The Buffalo County district attorney eventually decided not to
file charges, but Rickert was traumatized.

She was in Madison Thursday, visiting a friend, and I had a chance to speak
with her briefly on the telephone. "I'm pretty stable at about 85 pounds,"
Rickert said, though she was hospitalized for much of the month of May.
She's looking forward to the benefit, which is set for 5-8 p.m. Friday,
Oct. 1, at the Cardinal and is sponsored by several pro-medical marijuana
groups.

There's talk of another medical marijuana bill making it to the Wisconsin
Legislature in the coming year, and an appellate court decision in
California (headed to the U.S. Supreme Court) ruled that marijuana grown in
the state, with no money changing hands and a doctor's note, does not fall
under the controlled substances law -- effectively legalizing medical
marijuana under those circumstances.

On Thursday I recalled talking four years earlier to the police chief in
Mondovi. This was before a charging decision had been made in Rickert's
case. He really wasn't a bad guy. He told me: "I've got a job to do. Until
the law changes, it's illegal."

It's time to change the law.