NOT QUITE SO POTTY

SINCE Tasmania's Country Women's Association voted unanimously to lobby for
the trial use of marijuana for medical relief, Ailsa Bond's popular cheese
and parsley scones have been the subject of many a joke.

"People joke that the parsley flakes could be replaced with other green
flakes!" she says.

The move from the CWA to get the drug approved for medical use surprised
many, but the sprightly 80-year-old responds that the organisation has
always been progressive.

"We've been raising social issues for 60 or 70 years," she said. "We've
talked about the value of water, the importance of trees, we've lobbied for
childcare centres, for roads, for hospitals and libraries.

"We've got an image that all we do is have tea and scones, but we've always
been outspoken.

"It's just that we haven't always been recognised for what we've done."

Even so, Mrs Bond said she was surprised to see her motion passed unanimously.

She hadn't bargained on the strong support of several members who had
nursed terminally ill partners and witnessed their pain.

One of the women to address the meeting was Ruth (not her real name) whose
husband died from cancer.

She later told the Sunday Tasmanian of her agony as her husband became so
fragile that he broke a rib just reaching over to turn off a radio, and
suffering pain so terrible it made him cry.

"To him, morphine was a poison," she said. "It made him so dreadfully ill,
he couldn't keep food down. He wasted away to just 48kg.

"The doctors tried so many other pain-killers and every anti-nausea drug
but nothing worked.

"It wasn't just the pain, it was the indignity."

Ruth read of overseas studies about the use of marijuana for pain relief
and thought it might be just the thing as it was reported to have
anti-nausea properties. But her doctor said he couldn't prescribe it.

"I read that smoking it was the most effective way. People think 'smoking
- -- yuck!' but when someone is near death you're hardly going to worry about
them getting lung cancer, are you?" she said.

"Of course, it might not have helped my husband -- but it may have done.
What harm could there be in trying it?

"I feel very strongly about this. People don't realise the absolute horror
of watching someone you love in so much pain."

Mrs Bond recalls prescribing a liquid tincture of marijuana in her early
days of pharmacy in the 1940s, before concerns grew about its recreational use.

"Methadone can be controlled as a treatment for heroin addicts, so why
couldn't cannabis be controlled too?" she said.

Another CWA member was disappointed to read in The Mercury this week that
the State Government had responded that it had no plans to legalise
medicinal use of cannabis. The woman, who is nursing a husband with
war-related health problems, wants Tasmanian laws to mirror those of South
Australia and the ACT where growing plants for personal use is tolerated.

"You just can't imagine the sense of hopelessness when someone is suffering
like this and something that might help is beyond your reach," she said.