SHOWTIME DOCUMENTARY EXAMINES MEDICAL MARIJUANA ISSUE

Reefer madness can still be hazardous to your health.

That's the message of In Pot We Trust, a documentary airing this week
on Showtime. The show makes a persuasive case that marijuana provides
some patients a degree of relief they can't get from standard
medications and should be legally available.

Yet many patients continue to face prosecution and even jail for
smoking the palliative weed.

The show presents several compelling witnesses: a mother with severe
palsy, a stockbroker with bone tumors, a churchgoing woman suffering
from multiple sclerosis and a man whose post-traumatic stress problems
began when his father took the family to a restaurant and shot his
mother.

All insist marijuana relieves their pain and allows them to be
productive citizens. Sadly for them, some people in high places
fervently disagree.

The hero of the show is Aaron Houston, director of government
relations for the Marijuana Policy Project, a group that backs
medical-marijuana legislation at the state and federal levels. While a
small number of Americans participate in strictly regulated
weed-providing programs, millions more risk legal sanction for using
pot.

Anyone wondering how lobbyists operate will benefit from watching
Houston dog various congressmen, some of whom react as if they'd been
approached by a representative from a child-molesting ring.

Houston is used to rejection and clearly comfortable with political
combat, describing one opponent as "foaming at the mouth." He also
notes that his organization, in finest Washington tradition, dispenses
campaign donations to "the good guys."

The show gives plenty of face time to opponents, including former
Health, Education and Welfare chief Joseph A. Califano, now head of
the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. There are also
various drug czars and law enforcement officials, one of whom insists
that "society can perish" if drugs are decriminalized.

The documentary -- written, produced and directed by Star Price --
doesn't overlook the negative effects of toking. One memorable
segment, featuring pro-legalization marchers chanting "We smoke pot
and we like it a lot," includes an enthusiast who loses his train of
thought in mid-sentence.

Such lapses, to be sure, aren't confined to stoners. We see snippets
of congressional debate over medical marijuana legislation that makes
you wonder what they're smoking on Capitol Hill. One sputtering pol
rails that clerks at his grocery store have turned into dimwits from
smoking marijuana, though as Houston points out, such arguments have
nothing to do with medical marijuana.