SHERIFF LACKS COMPASSION IN POT CASE

My friend was riddled with bone cancer, which, after years of remissions
and relapses, made its way into her skull. In a last-ditch effort to save
her life, she became part of an Interleukin-12 experiment at USF.

Every day as I commuted to my job in San Jose, I dropped her off at the
train station for the rest of her journey to San Francisco. Every day I
picked her up, toxins flowing through her body, killing everything in their
path as they tracked down cancer cells.

The nausea was overwhelming for her - our drives home were laborious starts
and stops as she became ill on the side of the road. Anti-nausea
pharmaceutical drugs were the doctors' answer. They weren't without their
side effects, including constipation. She couldn't eat and became so gaunt
she could hardly walk.

The next day there would be more poison, more anti-nausea pharmaceuticals,
and more constipation. And depression. Someone in the program had dropped
dead at home. Nobody knew why.

Finally one day, as we drove home along 101 south of Gilroy, the poison
that had been building without elimination took its toll. At 55 mph, she
gasped for a few short breaths, regurgitated, then stopped breathing. I
stopped the car. Her eyes had rolled back into her head. As cars sped by
with oblivious drivers, I yanked her seat back, pounded on her chest,
screamed her name, blew breaths into her mouth. Within two minutes she took
a quick gasp and eventually opened her eyes. Later she would tell me she
followed my voice calling her name.

The next day I visited a group I had heard about in Santa Cruz that
provided medical marijuana to cancer and AIDS patients. It was before the
day in 1996 when Californians, in their infinite wisdom and compassion,
overwhelmingly passed the law allowing patients to use marijuana to ease
nausea and a host of other problems under a doctor's order. I was breaking
the law.

It took some convincing for my friend to try a marijuana cookie, but when
she did results were immediate. Instantly, she didn't need the anti-nausea
drug. Her constipation went away and the Interleukin-12 passed through her
system instead of building up to toxic levels. Her appetite came back,
which gave her the strength to fight the sickness. Doctors remarked she was
the only patient who gained weight during the trials. But because what she
was doing was illegal, she refused to tell them information that might have
helped other patients.

There is a happy ending for my friend. She has been cancer free for three
years now and is struggling only with a heart problem caused by the cancer
drugs. She credits her temporary use of marijuana as the reason she was
able to withstand the horrible side effects of the treatment.

A majority of Californians now side with her. The federal government, in an
unconscionable lack of compassion, however, has made it a priority to try
to circumvent the law that has provided relief to so many people. There is
too much leeway for abuse, the U.S. attorney general has said, apparently
forgetting that addictions to prescription drugs are the No. 1 drug problem
in America.

Why is this story relevant now? For reasons hard to understand, Sheriff
Curtis Hill, sworn to uphold the laws of California, has decided to side
with the federal government and ignore Judge Steve Sanders' order to return
medical marijuana to an ill man wrongly arrested in a drug raid on his
home. He has chosen to take issue with the state law and side with the
federal government in the case of Jack Campos, a heartless decision that
only could be driven by the sheriff's ego and personal beliefs about what's
wrong and right.

Campos has a Stanford doctor's order prescribing marijuana. Hill is wrong
to ignore Sanders, California voters and the doctor, and he's wrong to make
an ill man feel like a criminal. If he wants to interpret and enforce
federal laws, the U.S. Justice Department is now hiring.

But for now in San Benito County, he must follow California law and show
compassion for a man guilty only of having a life-threatening illness. If
he wants to learn first-hand how essential medical marijuana is to some
people suffering from disease, I'll be happy to pass along my friend's number.