BUSH'S PAINFUL OBSESSION WITH MEDICAL POT

I have known too many patients who have lived miserably or died painfully
to have patience with the Bush administration's intrusive attempts to bar
them from discussing medical marijuana with their doctors.

I've seen one too many old men spend their final hours nauseated and
vomiting while their distressed and helpless families watched. One too many
women with cancer who linger, bone-thin and languid, as their loved ones
beg for "something" to make them feel better.

And I, like so many doctors, have witnessed the therapeutic relief that
many such patients experience after using marijuana. Their illnesses become
less miserable, their difficult deaths are made more tolerable.

And those reasons explain precisely why the federal government's relentless
attempts to bar patients from access to medical marijuana constitute both
cruel and unusual crimes against us all. They are wrong-headed and
politically driven obsessions, not compassionate advisements intended to
relieve human suffering.

As a patient, when I'm feeling ill, I don't want John Ashcroft's opinion
about the best medical treatment for my condition. When someone I love
visits a medical clinic because she is sick to death, I hope that she will
be met by a doctor who will give her truthful advice born of experience and
a focused dedication to her well being. I pray that she is not met by a
federal agent with no clinical skills whose primary allegiance is to a
political agenda.

As a doctor, I am stunned by the intensity of the Bush administration's
obsession with medical marijuana. It boggles my mind to think that our
government officials are spending so much time and money to obstruct the
use of a medication that might actually help cancer patients tolerate their
chemotherapy, AIDS patients gain a little weight, glaucoma patients suffer
less.

We have yet to see any data from the Feds that explains why medicinal
marijuana should be excluded from pharmacy shelves that already contain
morphine and codeine -- as well as a host of other drugs for conditions
like heart disease or seizures that have longer potential side effect profiles.

I wish the administration would channel some of that energy towards, say,
improving pain control in our debilitated nursing home patients. Or
facilitating clinical research trials with medical marijuana so that
credible science could replace emotional rhetoric about the drug's efficacy.

IT was heartening that on Oct. 14, the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to
entertain the Bush administration's latest attempt to silence discussions
about medical marijuana between doctors and patients. Specifically, the
high court declined to re-examine last year's ruling by the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that said doctors could speak
freely with patients about the potential benefits of medical marijuana.

But had the Bush administration gotten its way this time, the federal
government would have acquired the authority to punish a doctor who simply
advised patients that medical marijuana might relieve their pain and
suffering. The Bush administration would have gained the right to slap a
federal offense on that doctor, revoke her ability to write prescriptions,
and subject her to criminal prosecution. And in the meantime, while that
doctor's prosecution might have given cause for some deluded Washington
administrators to raise their glasses in a rabid toast to the war on drugs,
a doctor who had tried to serve her ailing patients with honesty and
compassion is sidelined, and her patients are stranded.

We do have a drug problem in this country, but if it's to be solved, reason
and clear vision must guide us. The Feds' relentless attacks on physicians
who discuss medical marijuana as a potential means of alleviating their
patients' suffering smacks of cheap theatrics in a desperate effort to
stage some semblance of a victory in the real war on drugs.

Kate Scannell is an East Bay physician and writer.