SNAKE-OIL SALESMEN

Why Does The Bush Administration Seem So Intent On Denying Medical
Marijuana To Adults In Extreme Discomfort?

THE WHITE HOUSE Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) -- whose
anti-pot road show blew through Boston last week -- wants you to believe
that everything about marijuana is bad, bad, bad. That the plant's
promising medicinal benefits are simply a "Trojan-horse issue," perpetrated
by drug-reform advocates who are taking advantage of sick and dying people
to advance a decriminalization agenda. That legalizing medical marijuana
would confuse the "just say no" message for adolescents and cause them to
glamorize debilitating diseases like cancer, AIDS, and multiple sclerosis.

It's a lot to concede if you're a responsible adult who has taken the
occasional (or even frequent) toke. It's especially difficult to concede if
you're a responsible adult who smokes to ease the physical symptoms of
glaucoma, epilepsy, or asthma, among other diseases. But that pretty much
sums up the tenor at the ONDCP-sponsored New England Anti-Drug Summit,
which took place at Faneuil Hall on October 8. Headed by ONDCP director
John Walters -- a/k/a the nation's "drug czar" -- the event was part of a
25-city tour aimed at helping local leaders with three things: "stopping
drug use before it starts; healing those who are using drugs; and
disrupting the market for drug use," according to the ONDCP Web site. To
date, Walters and his entourage have traveled to San Diego, Seattle,
Detroit, and Denver. Here in Boston, the Just Say No brigade met with New
England governors, as well as health-care and law-enforcement personnel.
They talked about the region's heroin problem (see "Baby Talk," page 27).
They introduced President George W. Bush's "Access to Recovery Treatment
Initiative," a three-year, $600 million drug-treatment program pending
before Congress. And then, they let loose on the subject of medical marijuana.

Unlike the day's other debates, this three-person panel -- Andrea
Barthwell, an ONDCP deputy director; Mark Kraus, president of the
Connecticut Society of Addiction Medicine; and Billy Martin, pharmacology
chief at Virginia Commonwealth University -- paraded reams of
disinformation. Forget about meaningful discussion. Indeed, in keeping with
the Bush administration's general assault on patients who smoke pot to
manage their illnesses (see "Domestic Stealth Bombs," News and Features,
February 28), the federal government will go to extreme lengths to prevent
the push for legalizing medical marijuana -- and last week's panel was no
exception. If anything, it amounted to a one-sided exercise suggestive of
propaganda such as Reefer Madness (1938), whose characters are driven
insane by taking a puff of a joint. As Scott Mortimer, a Brookline resident
and medical-marijuana user who attended the October 8 summit, put it: "The
event reminded me of a West Virginia liar's contest, with panelists
spinning elaborate tall tales. The [ONDCP] policy concerning medical
marijuana is always rooted in ridicule and scorn."

IT'S NOT AS IF Mortimer, who suffers from paralyzing back pain, and other
proponents of medical marijuana didn't see the propaganda fest coming. By 9
a.m. last Wednesday, he and two dozen or so patients and drug-reform
advocates had gathered outside Faneuil Hall to protest what they dubbed the
ONDCP's "whitewash." After all, no one in favor of legalizing marijuana for
medicinal purposes had been included on the list of handpicked speakers.
This, despite the fact that the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), in
Washington, DC, had hounded the ONDCP for a chance to be heard. Local MPP
members had suggested panelists. They'd offered to submit testimony. They'd
asked to sit in the audience. Yet their requests were denied. Says MPP
communications director Bruce Mirken, "[ONDCP officials] clearly know there
will be opposition wherever they go, and they're trying to avoid it."

And the opposition at Faneuil Hall specifically set out to counter the
slanted rhetoric flowing from summit speakers. They held signs that read IT
IS EVIL TO DENY SICK PEOPLE MEDICAL MARIJUANA and STOP ARRESTING PATIENTS
FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA. They bellowed, "John Walters is coming to town to
spread lies!" while handing out fliers to preoccupied professionals and
tourists. They lectured wayward passers-by on the miracle of pot for people
suffering from chronic pain, nausea, and physical tremors.

Inside the hall, the ONDCP set the tone straightaway. Barthwell, who's
become the ONDCP mouthpiece on medical marijuana by penning op-eds against
the cause for newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, the Kansas City
Star, and Newsday, kicked off her remarks with a blunt statement of
opposition. Medical marijuana, she said, is "the worst scam" drug
legalizers have perpetrated on this country. She went on to dissect the
scientific research. Interestingly, she and her fellow panelists fixated on
the fact that patients who use marijuana for medicinal purposes typically
have to smoke it -- a delivery method that, they claimed, isn't
"scientifically proven." Smoking weed, they reasoned, goes against modern
medicine, which shuns cigarettes, and which has an arsenal of legal
prescription drugs that alleviate pain and nausea at its disposal.

As Barthwell declared, "No legitimate 21st-century physician would
recommend that patients smoke or chew opium." Yet "frauds in white coats,"
she said, are encouraging seriously ill patients to inhale dope rather than
participate in the latest drug regimens. "Is that the best that
21st-century medicine has to offer?" she demanded. The idea that crude pot
has medicinal value, she added, "is an insult" to modern medicine.

Kraus, of the Society of Addiction Medicine, echoed the sentiment. "For
each disease that's been treated by smoking marijuana," he insisted,
"there's an accepted and more effective alternative treatment." Even
Marinol, a synthetic pill of the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) compound found
in marijuana, which the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has
approved for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, is better than weed.
The raw plant, he said, "has not passed the rigors of scientific examination."

Only one panelist, Virginia pharmacology professor Martin, had the courage
to buck the status quo by acknowledging that marijuana has, in fact, helped
patients. But he quickly got back on message. He noted the lack of research
proving pot's medicinal benefits. "We have a choice," he explained, "and
it's a simple one." Do we want to devote money and effort to determine
whether marijuana has a place in medicine or not? As he sees it, the issue
isn't "worth the resources."

Still, that didn't faze the folks at the anti-drug summit, where the only
worthwhile question was one raised by Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
Why, Romney wondered, isn't marijuana treated the same way as any other
pharmaceutical drug? "Would it not be appropriate to subject marijuana to
this same [drug-testing] process?" he asked, setting off a wave of applause
among proponents. Yet it is precisely this sort of question that routinely
goes ignored by Washington's anti-drug pooh-bahs. (It took all he had for
Doblin, of MAPS, to refrain from calling out from the audience, "We'd like
to do more research, but the drug czar is holding us back.")

Meanwhile, John Baldacci, the governor of Maine -- the only New England
state to approve a medical-marijuana law in 1999 -- sounded wishy-washy and
apologetic. Though he recognized that the legislation "doesn't appear to be
a widespread problem" for either the state police or the children of Maine,
he failed to defend the initiative. He failed to hold it up as a successful
model for the rest of New England. He failed to challenge the ONDCP's empty
rhetoric.

IN THE END, the anti-drug summit was a disservice to New Englanders.
Medical marijuana, after all, is no longer a fringe issue. Just this week,
the US Supreme Court turned down the Bush administration's request that it
consider whether the federal government can punish doctors for even talking
about the medicinal benefits of pot -- thereby paving the way for state
laws that legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes. To date, nine states
have enacted such legislation. Maine may be the only state in the region to
do so, but the rest of the area isn't far behind. Last year, a
medical-marijuana bill made it to the desk of former Vermont governor
Howard Dean, who vetoed it. Already, the bill has been refiled. Connecticut
drug reformers are pushing to expand a 1981 state law allowing doctors to
prescribe patients marijuana -- a law that Rowland, then a state
representative, supported. Though the effort failed last summer, advocates
plan to re-introduce amendments to protect medical-marijuana patients next
February. In Massachusetts, a similar bill that would create legal
protections for medical-marijuana patients is now pending before the
legislature. And New Hampshire advocates are ambushing Democratic
presidential candidates to get them on record about the issue. (The most
favorable? Dennis Kucinich, who's promised to sign an executive order
legalizing pot for medicinal purposes if he's elected president.)

Given the issue's momentum in New England, the ONDCP panel could have
engaged in much-needed debate. Yet panelists refused to consider the real
questions. And the governors failed to take the issue seriously. Instead,
the summit toed the Bush-administration line. It was easy for New England
governors to do that in a gilded hall huddled together with the drug czar,
as Robert Rooke, who heads the Connecticut drug-reform group A Better Way
Foundation, points out. "But to do that in a room full of patients who need
marijuana and have to go underground to get it is a whole other story."