MONTANA GRAPPLES WITH MEDICAL MARIJUANA ISSUE

HELENA -- Larry Rathbun spent 22 months in Montana State Prison for trying
to ease the pain and the spasms that are inherent with multiple sclerosis.

The nine plants that sent him to prison, he said, were the same kind of
plants that helped him in his fight against the wheelchair -- marijuana.
With out it, in prison, he lost that battle.

"I walked into Deer Lodge and rolled out," he told the House Judiciary
Committee Friday in support of House Bill 506 , which would legalize the use
of medicinal cannabis, or marijuana. in the state of Montana.

Rep. Ron Erickson, D-Missoula, wants to change that with a bill he said he's
sponsoring because, "pain counts." Under the bill, people certified by the
state health department could grow or buy limits of marijuana to help ease
their medical pains.

On Friday, Erickson got over the first hurdle. His bill passed the committee
13-5.

John Masterson, the director of the Montana chapter of the National
Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and a Missoula doctor who
is an authority on medicinal cannabis teamed with Erickson to draft HB506 ,
which would protect those using or growing marijuana from prosecution for
medicinal purposes. The bill would set up an identification system,
administered through the health and human services department, that would
give each patient an identity card to show they are using for medicinal
purposes.

Dr. Ethan Russo, a neurologist from Missoula, helped draft the bill, which
he said will help patients with migraines, nausea and other side effects of
medical treatments such as chemotherapy and help patients with AIDS,
neurological diseases and glaucoma, among others.

However, possibly the most prominent ailment to be treated with cannabis is
that from which Rathbun suffers and Russo treats -- multiple sclerosis.

"We now know that cannabis positively influences the disease itself," the
doctor said, adding that it's not just for MS patients, but others suffering
from other ongoing, nerve-based pain."

Robin Prosser, a Missoula activist, who went on a 60-day hunger strike last
spring, also came to speak for the bill. Prosser has an immunosuppressive
disorder and other conditions that she said cause chronic pain, heart
trouble, muscle spasms, nausea and daily migraines. She said she is
currently on 15 medications, but she's allergic to most traditional
medicines.

"I would like to get past the point of just trying to feel well enough to be
here, to do things," she said. "I'm in pain every day and it's not my fault
that I'm sick. It's not my fault that medical science cannot come up with a
proper drug."

There was only one person who spoke in opposition to the bill during
Friday's hearing -- a doctor, but also a cancer survivor and a glaucoma
sufferer.

Dr. Hollis LeFever, a family practitioner from Glasgow, spoke in opposition
on behalf of himself and the Montana Medical Association. One of his main
objections was that cannabis has not been FDA-approved, he said, and
physicians have no way to administer or monitor its use in their patients.
It can also have a negative effect on the cardiovascular system, it causes
emotional ramifications in some patients, he said.

To the same end, federal law would not allow doctors to prescribe the use of
marijuana, LeFever said.

Russo later said that HB506 does not ask physicians to prescribe, but only
that patients be allowed to use cannabis.

HB 506 was patterned after Oregon's law. So far, nine states have adopted
similar laws, including Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and Oregon. A
similar bill died in the Wyoming legislature this year.

A 1998 study done by Montana State University-Billings and Montanans for
Medical Rights found that 70 percent of Montanans showed support, or
strongly supported policies that allowed for the safe and legal access to
medical cannabis.

"If we must have a war on cannabis users, what I would encourage as a policy
to at least remove the sick and wounded, the people who are in pain and have
these debilitating diseases," Masterson said. "Remove them from the
battlefield of this drug war."