Pubdate: Sat, 03 Feb 2007
Source: Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA)
Copyright: 2007 The Spokesman-Review
Contact:  http://www.spokesmanreview.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/417
Author: Damon Agnos, The Washington Forum
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Sharon+Tracy
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Marijuana - Medicinal)

MEDICAL MARIJUANA USERS NEED PROTECTION

Sharon Tracy "may have been exactly the kind of patient the voters of 
this state had in mind when they enacted the medical marijuana 
initiative, I-692."

So said the Washington State Supreme Court in a Nov. 22 ruling about 
a woman who suffers from, among other things, diabetes, heart 
disease, degenerating discs in her back, a hip deformity, and who has 
had a series of eight corrective surgeries for a ruptured colon and 
bowel conditions. On her doctor's recommendation, Sharon Tracy was 
using marijuana to treat her pain.

Nevertheless, Skamania County saw fit to arrest and prosecute her, 
and the Supreme Court saw fit to uphold her conviction, all because 
her doctor got his license in California instead of Washington. Now 
she is serving home detention in Stevenson, more than 25 miles from 
the nearest hospital, and her felony conviction means that she'll no 
longer be able to help out at the day care at her church.

Prosecuting Sharon Tracy and monitoring her through the department of 
corrections is probably not the way most taxpayers want their money 
spent. And, as the court pointed out, it is clearly not what 
Washington voters had in mind when they voted for Washington's 
medical marijuana initiative. Those voters recognized that protecting 
people like Sharon Tracy from prosecution and jail time is a matter 
of compassion, common sense and fiscal responsibility.

However, law enforcement and the courts have had difficulty honoring 
the voters' will. Time and again, the people whom the law was meant 
to protect find themselves in handcuffs or worse. A Centralia man, 
the caretaker for a muscular dystrophy patient, was arrested and 
prosecuted for possessing that patient's medical marijuana (which was 
then confiscated) - even though the law explicitly allows him to do 
so. A Bremerton woman who has lupus and a doctor's recommendation for 
medical marijuana was arrested and prosecuted for possessing a pipe 
with nothing but marijuana residue in it. There are stories like 
these all across Washington.

If we want to make sure that the law does what it was intended to do 
- - that is, to protect patients and caregivers from unnecessary and 
cruel prosecution - we need to make some changes.

The law needs to be clarified so that those who follow the rules can 
avoid arrest, not just conviction. As it stands, the law provides 
only a defense at trial.

The law needs to be clarified so that qualifying patients and 
caregivers can create community medical gardens, providing the 
intangible benefits of community support and ensuring that all 
patients who need medical marijuana have access to it. Growing 
marijuana is an expensive, time-consuming endeavor - frequently too 
much for a sick patient too handle alone. If one of your elderly 
relatives learned she needed chemotherapy in a week, and her doctor 
recommended marijuana for the nausea, do you think she'd be able to 
grow what she needs in seven days? If she could join a community 
garden, she'd be sure to have her medicine when the treatments began.

The law needs to be clarified to protect employees who use medical 
marijuana. Employees who treat their pain with cannabis on a doctor's 
recommendation should not be treated any differently from employees 
who treat their pain with opiate-based drugs like codeine on their 
doctor's recommendation. Testing positive for following your doctor's 
advice shouldn't mean losing your job.

The law should be clarified so that doctors' expert opinions are 
given their due. Washington respects a California doctor's opinion 
that a patient will benefit from conventional painkillers; it should 
also respect that same doctor's opinion that another patient would 
benefit instead from medical marijuana.

It's too late for our medical marijuana law to protect Sharon Tracy, 
but Gov. Gregoire should issue a commutation so she can return to 
California to care for her very ill mother, and a pardon to rid her 
of the felony conviction that prevents her from working with 
children. Just as importantly our Legislature needs to make sure that 
future patients don't have to undergo her ordeal. It's a simple 
decision - compassion, common sense and fiscal responsibility tell us 
that it makes no sense to prosecute and jail sick people for pursuing 
doctor-recommended medication. Let's do the right thing and protect 
Washington's medical marijuana patients. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake