Pubdate: Sun, 25 Feb 2001
Source: Boston Herald (MA)
Copyright: 2001 The Boston Herald, Inc
Contact:  One Herald Square, Boston, MA 02106-2096
Website: http://www.bostonherald.com/
Source: Boston Herald
Author: Tom Mashberg

PATIENTS HEATEDLY DEFEND SMOKING WEED

She works nights as a nurse in a cancer ward outside Boston, tending to the 
sick and the dying. Not a day passes when she isn't asked the same 
raspy-voiced question: "How can I get some marijuana?''

Like many caregivers across the state, she guides the supplicant to someone 
who can help - a hospital staffer with a stash, perhaps, or another patient 
on chemotherapy.

Pot, she is convinced, eases the suffering and indignity of cancer.

"You can really see the difference,'' she said, discussing only on 
condition of anonymity the way medicinal marijuana circulates in cancer 
centers. "Patients are more interested in food. They do not look so 
physically wasted. They engage more with their families.''

As this nurse and others make clear, while the law may deride it, the use 
of medicinal marijuana is commonplace in Massachusetts.

Some people, like Robert Angelesco, 50, of Revere, started smoking after 
contracting Hodgkin's disease in 1995. For him, as for other cancer 
patients, pot mitigated the wretched nausea and wooziness of his drug 
treatments. Others, like Marcy Duda, 39, of Ware, turned to pot after 
suffering a series of near-fatal aneurysms. A few puffs on a joint, she 
said, staved off the debilitating migraines that would otherwise knock her 
out for days at a time. "Before marijuana, I was a legal-substance 
abuser,'' said Duda, an activist who wears a headband made of silk cannabis 
leaves and who makes speeches, leads petition drives and writes to 
legislators seeking legalization of medicinal pot. "Demerol, Percocet, 
Valium, this stuff was prescribed to me. It left me sick and useless.

"With pot,'' she said, "I smoked a little and 20 minutes later I was 
functional for the rest of the day.''

And then there's "C.J.,'' a father from the southwestern part of the state 
who was on federal disability for years for bipolar disorder and other 
psychological problems before turning to medicinal pot. ``I'm finally off 
(disability) and working now,'' said C.J., who asked that his name be 
withheld but agreed to be photographed. "It's ironic. Pot has made me a 
taxpayer again.''

Duda, Angelesco and C.J. all say they have tried Marinol, a legal 
prescription drug in pill form that contains a synthesized version of the 
active ingredient in marijuana.

At $10 a pill, they say, it is not only costly but nearly impossible for 
nauseated chemotherapy sufferers to swallow. The effect in pill form, they 
add, is slower and less soothing than that of smoke.

"Marinol has never worked on anyone,'' said Robert, a 45-year-old Web 
designer and distance cyclist from the North Shore who smokes marijuana to 
alleviate the asthma he developed after experiencing brain and kidney tumors.

"The docs put me on it, they put me on powerful steroids and 
amphetamines,'' he said. "None of it worked. I was desperate. A friend 
convinced me to try a little pot, and I couldn't believe the result.''

Robert, a conservative whose neighbors include police officers and state 
troopers, said his wife was so skeptical and fearful, she made him stop 
using the herb. A week later, he said, his asthma had returned in earnest 
and he again lost whole days to illness.

"Of course I asked myself, 'How can smoking be any good for your lungs?' '' 
he said. "It doesn't make sense. My daughter is very antidrug. She was 
hypercritical. So I researched it. Sure enough, this is a very well 
documented phenomenon among people with asthma.

"I don't smoke at work or at home,'' he said. "I'm a responsible adult with 
serious clients. I smoke maybe the equivalent of a joint a week. This drug 
should be legal. I'm worried all the time about arrest. I can't believe my 
government has put me in this position.''
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