POT LAWS HURT THOSE WHO ALREADY SUFFER

Elaine McKellips, a 55-year-old Republican grandmother, doesn't think
of herself as a bad person, let alone a criminal. She has a son,
daughter-inlaw and two grandchildren in Oregon. Her son fought in
Operation Desert Storm.

Elaine, who lives in Atascadero, has been a lawabiding businesswoman.
She once even turned in a meth dealer in her neighborhood.

But various illnesses with obscure-sounding names have grabbed her
and thrown her down: degenerative disc disease, spastic esophagus,
hyperactive bowel.

She has suffered through them all. And then one day, gastroparesis
came calling. It's a complex stomach ailment that, simply put, partly
paralyzes the stomach and keeps food from passing through in a normal
manner. Among its many symptoms are vomiting and nausea.

"It's like having morning sickness every day," she says.

Incapacitated, Elaine reluctantly took her doctor's advice and went
to Morro Bay's Compassionate Care Center to get medical marijuana to
help with the nausea. It worked.

Then the center closed, collateral damage in the war on drugs and the
nation's culture wars.

Various reasons have arisen for closing this or any other medical
marijuana dispensary:

. The Feds believe medical marijuana is illegal, even though the
state does not;

. There is widespread belief that marijuana leads to abuse of
stronger drugs; and

. A dark suspicion lurks that dispensaries are merely fronts for drug runners.

Elaine has heard them all. But as she lies in bed fighting nausea or,
having lost the fight, hunches over the toilet vomiting, she thinks
that perhaps one part of this story is being forgotten: the sick.

Elaine doesn't understand why there is such little compassion for
them -- for her -- in this struggle.

"I'm not a druggie," she says. "I don't know why they see me as a problem.

"They think you go to the doctor and say, 'I want to smoke
marijuana.' But this is a last resort."

She says she went to the dispensary once a month.

Marijuana "relaxes me; it calms my nausea. I'm able to lie down, and
the nausea eases," she says.

It's really just that simple, and Elaine believes it is the same for
the other people who went to the clinic. She thinks with the clinic
closed, and with opposition mounting to a dispensary proposed in
Templeton, all of them will suffer.

"Cancer patients in Paso will need it; chemo patients," she says.

In exasperation, Elaine sighs that the people who believe the worst
"don't understand."

"It almost needs to touch their lives," Elaine says. "I wish they
could live my life for 24 hours and tell me (marijuana) doesn't help.
Or come over and sit with me when I throw up, or bathe me."

For the moment, Elaine is taking a panoply of prescriptions. They
aren't helping as much. She can't get to the nearest dispensary in
Buellton; it's too far.

Losing access "makes my life more hopeless," she says. "I don't want
to live like this."

"If you see someone suffering," she asks, "how can you say you're not
going to help him?"