THE BEST MEDICINE?

In Louisiana, qualified patients are supposed to be able to legally use
pot. But so far, the state's medical marijuana laws are nothing but smoke.

Until last August, Wesley Sarradet resided quietly in his childhood home in
the West Baton Rouge Parish community of Brusly, with his 92-year-old
grandmother, two guns and a closet full of pot.

Sarradet has lived in the three-bedroom home for 42 years. Born with
spastic cerebral palsy, he receives a modest income from Social Security.
The guns were for security. The marijuana plants provided a source of
relief, he says, from uncontrollable muscle spasms that plague him daily
and keep him awake at night.

The quiet existence and the security erupted last summer. Sarradet says
narcotics agents busted down his kitchen door with a battering ram in the
middle of the night. "They were local police officers working with the
narcotics task force and they had known me all their lives," Sarradet says,
his voice rising in anger. "I went to high school with one of them. Three
of the officers in my home had known me my entire life. They called me by
my name. They had shattered the back door; glass everywhere. My grandmother
was in the next room, the living room, in her hospital bed.

"They said they had a search warrant and I was not under arrest, and to
give them any marijuana that I had in the home and they would write me a
misdemeanor summons."

Sarradet gave them some loose pot, and the officers countered that there
had to be more in the house. "They searched my bank records, they searched
through my drawers. They didn't find any other drugs; no cash money,
nothing like that." The police took two guns that Sarradet says he
purchased legally, and they threatened to seize a stack of adult magazines
to check them for child pornography, Sarradet says.

"They said, where did I get my marijuana? They said, 'We can make this all
go away' if I tell them -- if I drop names. I got the key and opened my
closet where I had my hydroponics operation going, and that made them
extremely happy. That's where I was getting my marijuana from -- from my
own closet, for my own personal use. There were 14 plants in there, all
different sizes, only three of which were budding.

"They told me to get dressed ... they were bringing me in. I was charged
with two drug felonies and a misdemeanor; paraphernalia was the
misdemeanor. I was charged with possession with intent to distribute, and
charged with cultivation. My bond was $75,000."

Agents at the River West Narcotics Task Force who arrested Sarradet can
remember his case more than a year later. Task force director Maj. Jerome
Fontenot scoffs at Sarradet's claim that he had grown the plants solely for
personal use, while assistant director James "Richie" Johnson, one of the
arresting officers who knew Sarradet, concedes that Sarradet probably did
have medical problems. But Johnson says he has a duty to uphold the law,
which makes marijuana illegal no matter what.

The officers told Sarradet they obtained a search warrant based on the
testimony of a "confidential informant" who had been in Sarradet's house
within 24 hours of the raid, and who told them Sarradet was a pot supplier.
Sarradet believes the informant was an acquaintance of his, a man in jail
at the time of the raid, and who gave the officers Sarradet's name in
exchange for a reduced sentence. "A jailhouse snitch looking to get out of
trouble," Sarradet calls him.

Sarradet says he had grown his own pot for years. He found it cheaper, more
effective and less overwhelming than prescribed medications, many of which
are addictive and have overwhelming side effects. These drugs include
hydrocodone (Vicodin) and morphine patches for pain, and methocarbamol for
spasms, alprazolam (Xanax) for anxiety and depression. "I had been using
the marijuana therapeutically for a number of years," Sarradet says. "I
have spastic cerebral palsy which is severe in my lower limbs and which
makes the muscles in my whole body real tense. Cerebral palsy is an
electrical impulse from the brain that fires the muscles, and it's almost
being fired constantly. Marijuana helps me to relax at night, and helps me
to sleep at night."

Sarradet was willing to go to trial, to get relatives to testify that no
one outside the family had visited the home just prior to the raid, to lay
out his medical history. "I don't think a jury would have convicted me if I
would have been allowed to use my medical records in evidence," Sarradet
says, "but I didn't know if the judge would have allowed me to use my
medical records, or even mention the words 'medical marijuana.'"

So he decided to accept a plea bargain to stay out of jail -- a five-year
probation and random drug tests in exchange for a second-offense felony
possession charge, though it was his first-ever drug bust. "My lawyer told
me that was a best-interest plea and that's what I took -- to guarantee no
jail time.

"I've lost my rights to possess my handguns. I can't defend my home and
there are two disabled people living in this house," Sarradet says. "I've
lost my right to vote and I believe my rights to privacy were violated
through the search warrant, being that it was bogus. So that's three rights
I believe were violated."

He's getting drug tested, and if he's caught with marijuana in his system
that's a third offense and a guaranteed prison stay. Now Sarradet says he
can't sleep; he's lost weight, and he says the drugs he takes legally for
pain and seizure control have robbed him of his appetite and turned him
into a zombie. "I pretty much was really shafted every which way," he says.

The kicker is that in Louisiana, people like Sarradet are supposed to be
able to legally obtain medical marijuana.

According to state law, marijuana is legal for patients who qualify to use
it. The problem is that the law -- which passed through the state
legislature in three incarnations -- never took effect, so medical
marijuana remains in a curious legal limbo here.

In 1978, then-Gov. Edwin Edwards signed a bill cleared by the House and
Senate to let doctors prescribe marijuana for glaucoma, cancer and
paralysis patients. The new law called for the creation of a Marijuana
Prescription Review Board to determine who would be able to obtain legal
marijuana.

That board never got off the ground. Louisiana's medical-marijuana law
lingered until 1981, when an amended version of the 1978 bill was
introduced. This one, too, authorized doctors to prescribe marijuana; it
also cleared the House and Senate and was also signed into law, this time
by then-Gov. David Treen. And like its predecessor, it never saw the light
of day. In 1989, the Marijuana Prescription Review Board was deemed an
inactive commission and dissolved.

In 1991, another lawmaker took a stab at reviving Louisiana's
medical-marijuana law. Rep. Clark Gaudin, R-Baton Rouge, introduced the
bill after a young man rolled into Gaudin's office in his wheelchair to
talk to the lawmaker about his reliance on pot.

"He would have some type of convulsions from time to time, and he would
shake like he had 7,500 volts running in his body," recalls Gaudin, now an
attorney in private practice. "He said [marijuana] was the only thing that
gave him any kind of relief."

Gaudin, a conservative Republican, says the medical-marijuana issue
transcended party lines. "A lot of my colleagues were a little surprised
that I would be the author of the bill," he says. "But I agents, are not
what you want; it's the THC ... but if you don't smoke it, that takes away
from the recreational benefit that people want. And how many people are
claiming medical need when they are really looking for use recreationally?"

King cautions that no legal body should be casual about allowing medical
marijuana. "There's a lot of legal drugs making their way onto the black
market," he warns. "If [legalization] occurs, there needs to be a clear
indication that marijuana is a chemical substance, and a drug that has an
effect like other drugs. And if it's proven to have a beneficial effect --
that is, if it's proven -- then, like other drugs, there may be benefits
from using the marijuana."

The crux of the medical marijuana argument rests in the question of whether
pot is as effective, or more so, than other medications in easing such
ailments as nausea, appetite loss and its subsequent "wasting" effect,
muscle spasms, and intraocular pressure.

Most of the evidence that supports marijuana as a therapeutic substance is
anecdotal, dependent upon the claims of patients rather than research
studies. "Unfortunately, we don't have any good clinical trials that really
have looked at marijuana in the same sort of systematic fashion that we
have for many of the other medications that we use," says Dr. John Cole, an
oncologist at the Ochsner Cancer Institute.

"Although the perception is that it's not as good as some of our other
medications for nausea, in terms of being able to prove that, we really
don't have these comparative trials. So from a purely scientific
standpoint, we can't say for sure whether marijuana is as good as the other
medications."

NORML spokesman Paul Armenthano blames the federal government for the lack
of research, saying it keeps a tight rein on the pot legally grown on the
federal farm in Oxford, Miss. Besides, he says, the quality of marijuana
cultivated there is so poor that it would skew any legitimate studies meant
to test the herb's effectiveness.

"The marijuana grown at the University of Mississippi at Oxford is doled
out for NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse) research purposes,"
Armenthano says. "The overwhelming majority of research, not surprisingly,
is research that is trying to find the negative ramifications of marijuana."

He also points out that the pharmaceutical industry -- consistently among
the nation's top donors to political campaigns -- vehemently oppose the
legal sanction of any medication that patients can grow for themselves.

The scarcity of clinical studies means that scientists don't really know
why marijuana seems to work so well for some patients, says Jean Redmann,
the Education Director for the NO/AIDS Task Force. "It could be the alchemy
of so many things that are in the plant -- that's a theory. No one has done
much scientific research on why it works; it's very hard to do scientific
research on marijuana right now," she says.

"I think most of us [at NO/AIDS] -- I'm going out on a limb here -- I think
most of us would be OK with using marijuana to relieve symptoms if it were
legally prescribed," she says. "It has some evidence of medical efficacy."

Redmann recalls the issue of medical marijuana coming up during a doctor's
visit with her mother, years ago. "My mother's oncologist told her that
'some people say marijuana helps alleviate the symptoms.' And he gave me
this look, as if to say 'OK, you're the daughter living in New York ... .'"

Cole cites a survey taken in 1991 by the American Society of Clinical
Oncology, who polled its members to find if any had suggested that their
patients try pot. "About 44 percent said they had recommended marijuana to
at least one person. That was pretty interesting. But at that time, we were
still struggling quite a bit with controlling the nausea and the vomiting
associated with chemotherapy. Our expertise has improved quite a bit since
then, primarily with the development of anti-nausea medications."

One company, Unimed Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Georgia, patented a synthetic
form of the extract THC. The drug, known as Marinol, is prescribed to
cancer and AIDS patients to stimulate appetite and combat nausea, though
patients have reported it's not as fast-acting or as effective as marijuana
in smoked form, and doesn't work well for those who have trouble
swallowing. Cole agrees that Marinol is "not a real effective anti-nausea
medication," and he generally prescribes other drugs.

An Oxford, Miss. company has developed a medication that contains THC
extracted from marijuana; one dose equals about a fifth of the THC normally
found in a marijuana cigarette, says its manufacturer, ElSohly
Laboratories. The drug is expected to be legal in the United States in
about three years, and like Marinol is touted as having the therapeutic
effects of marijuana without the high. The company will market its THC
extract in suppository form, which Cole admits is "aesthetically not
pleasing ... but a patient having a difficult time swallowing would need an
alternative route of medication."

Cole acknowledges smoking is one such alternate route. He does not advise
his patients to try marijuana, in part due to the risk of being arrested
for purchasing an illegal drug. But Cole doesn't object when patients tell
him they're already smoking pot, and says he'd probably prescribe it if he
could.

"I think there would be a subgroup of patients who probably would benefit
from that," the oncologist says. "My primary goal is to get my patients
through their treatment as successfully as possible ... and occasionally we
do have patients who have problems with nausea, in spite of everything we
have. So the more we have to work with, the better."

Wesley Sarradet is another person who has been avidly following
medical-marijuana stories. He's planning to one day move to a state that
has decriminalized marijuana for medical use. "But I'm the primary
caregiver for my grandmother, so seven nights a week I have to stay here,
and I'm not in a position where I can leave. But when I am in the position
where I can leave, I will leave immediately."

Sarradet says that life since the August 2001 raid has been a grim march of
days in which he's either wracked with pain or too drugged on strong legal
painkillers to function. "If I want to stay in bed, I can take the
medication. If I want to have a normal-functioning life where I can do
stuff for myself, I can't take that medicine."

His doctor, he claims, expressed sympathy that he had to quit using
marijuana. "My doctor told me my condition is only going to get worse as I
get older," Sarradet says.

"He said if he would have been able to write me a prescription, he would
have done it. He said anything to help me cope with my condition should be
available to me."