Pubdate: Thu, 17 May 2001
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2001 Houston Chronicle
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198
Author: Clarence Page, columnist
Note: Page is a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist specializing in 
urban issues. He is based in Washington, D.C.

ANTI-POT POLITICS IS NO CURE FOR THE SICK

THE Supreme Court has spoken. Federal anti-drug laws trump state laws that 
allow patients to have marijuana when their doctors recommend it.

That's sad news to Kathleen Marie "Kitty" Tucker, a 57-year-old lawyer and 
mother who favors the legalization of marijuana for medicinal use.

Since 1987 she has suffered from migraines and fibromyalgia, a chronic 
muscle pain disorder, too severe to let her work outside her suburban 
Maryland home.

She's been using such legal drugs as Marinol, a synthetic version of the 
active ingredient in marijuana. But none relieve her symptoms as well -- 
and with as few side effects -- as smoking marijuana used to, she says.

She knows because she used to grow her own marijuana in the basement of her 
family home in Takoma Park, Md., a Washington suburb.

But, in 1999, her then-16-year-old daughter, in an apparent burst of teen 
rage, told the local police about mommy's indoor garden.

Weeks later, the charges were dropped. But, by then, Tucker's husband, 
Robert Alvarez, had lost his job as a senior policy adviser at the U.S. 
Energy Department, and the family had been put through an emotional and 
legal ringer.

Tucker's hopes for legal pot evaporated along with those of numerous other 
sufferers on Monday when the Supreme Court ruled 8-to-0 against 
marijuana-supplying co-ops in California. Federal law does not allow the 
distribution of marijuana even to people whose doctors recommend it to 
alleviate symptoms of serious illness, the court ruled.

That ruling dealt a setback, if not a definitive blow, to the movement 
that, so far, has led to the legalization of medical marijuana in eight 
states plus the District of Columbia.

Sure, you can legalize medicinal marijuana all you want, the high court 
told the voters and legislators, but that doesn't mean Washington has to 
let it happen.

Poll after poll tends to show that most people support doctor-approved 
medicinal use of marijuana.

Yet, the issue has failed with most Washington politicians and most state 
legislatures, except for Hawaii. It is as if the issue has nothing to do 
with real science or even real people anymore, just politics and posturing.

Nobody ever lost an election by promising to be "tough" on drugs, even when 
it means being unnecessarily tough on the sick.

Justice Clarence Thomas, author of the high court's ruling, offered a good 
example. When he cited the federal statute that says marijuana has "no 
currently accepted medical use," he was expressing a political view, not a 
scientific one.

Lawmakers could simply look at the 1999 report by the Institute of 
Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences. It confirmed the 
effectiveness of marijuana's active components in treating pain, nausea and 
the anorexic wasting syndrome associated with AIDS.

The report did caution against smoking marijuana for more than six months. 
After all, smoking anything is hazardous to your health. Unfortunately, the 
study did not discuss vaporizers, a popular nonsmoking alternative in the 
California marijuana clubs that were parties in the Supreme Court case.

So, more research needs to be done. Both sides of the debate can agree on 
that. Yet, Washington politicians have been extremely reluctant to grant 
government-approved marijuana for research. So, new research gets stuck in 
a Catch-22: The politicians say we can't legalize marijuana because there's 
not enough research; then they don't fund the research. How convenient.

Opponents of legalization say that prosecutors probably won't spend much 
time or money going after sick patients. They're probably right. It 
wouldn't be worth it. Juries would be reluctant to convict, especially in a 
state or town that voted overwhelmingly for legalization.

But, as Kitty Tucker's case shows, you don't have to be prosecuted after a 
drug arrest to be punished by it.

First the punishment, then -- guess what? No trial. That's what happens 
when politicians care less about people than they do about posturing.

During his presidential campaign, President Bush said he opposed legalizing 
medical marijuana in Texas but thought the federal government should leave 
the question up to the states. That's a campaign promise he should keep.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom