Pubdate: Thu, 14 Feb 2013
Source: Glendale Star, The (AZ)
Copyright: 2013 Glendalestar.com, Glendale, AZ
Contact: http://www.glendalestar.com/site/forms/?mode=letters
Website: http://www.glendalestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/5320
Author: A. Melvin McDonald

MEDICAL MARIJUANA A HEALING PLANT FOR MEDICALLY NEEDY

I was a prosecutor with the Maricopa County Attorney's office from
1970-1974.

I served seven years as a Maricopa County Superior Court judge after
leaving the County Attorney's office.

In 1981, I was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to serve as U.S.
Attorney. The top priority of my office from 1981-1985 was fighting
the drug war. While serving as United States Attorney, I was a member
of the Advisory Committee to U.S. Attorney General William French
Smith and was involved in setting national policies and priorities.

It would be natural, based on my background, to assume that I would
oppose Arizona's voter-approved medical marijuana law, which allows
people with certain medical conditions to have access to medical
marijuana through state-licensed regulated dispensaries. But sometimes
it takes extraordinary circumstances to get people to see ordinary
truths. And that is the case with me.

So here is my story.

In 1997, my 14-year-old son was hit by a car and thrown 125 feet
across a busy intersection in Gilbert, Arizona. He sustained severe
and permanent brain damage. After the near-fatal accident, the brain
injury evolved into frequent and massive epileptic seizures. These
seizures have been regular occurrences for the past 16 years. One of
his many seizures has left him with uncontrollable shaking in his left
arm.

Some of the world's finest neurologists and neurosurgeons have
prescribed various combinations of approximately 30 different
medications. His condition has been evaluated and treated by some of
the top experts in the country, from UCLA Medical Center to the Mayo
Clinic in Scottsdale to Barrow's Neurological in Phoenix.

In 2003, the seizure condition became so severe that my wife and I and
our son agreed to have a portion of his brain removed in hopes this
might stop his agony. We were told it had two-thirds chance of
working. Unfortunately, we were in the one-third.

In the early years, following the accident, my son was in a state of
constant nausea and would go days at a time without eating. Nothing
worked, not even the prescription drug Marinol.

We learned early on that despite the significant doses of various
medications, nothing stopped the seizures and nothing stopped the
nausea, which arose from both the seizures and the medications. His
weight dropped from 180 pounds to 119 pounds because of the severe
nausea. He would go days at a time without eating.

Nothing worked until a friend with severe pain issues gave him some
marijuana, which proved to be the only substance that would curtail
the nausea. This was prior to Arizona's medical marijuana law.

So there I was - the man appointed by President Reagan to head the
drug war in Arizona - with pot being used to help my son find some
peace and to have some semblance toward a quality of life.

My wife had to be resourceful to gain access to marijuana. But if you
are a parent, if you are a mother, is there anything you won't do to
aid your ailing child? The choice for her was brutally harsh  find
ways to give your son life-saving marijuana so he could eat and
diminish the nausea knowing that her loving help for our son could
potentially result in criminal prosecution.

When Arizona voters approved medical marijuana in 2010, our family
rejoiced. Now our son could purchase higher quality and effective
marijuana for what is truly a legitimate reason. My wife could drive
him to state approved dispensaries and purchase medically approved
marijuana cultivated for that precise medical need  nausea.

Now my wife and son are faced with the possibility of returning to the
underground, to those days of uncertainty, his medical purgatory, a
hellish quality of life. There is a bill in the Legislature that aims
to revote and repeal the medical marijuana law.

They say the jury is still out on marijuana's medical benefits, that
there are too many problems with the program. To those proponents of
repeal, I say  come and see and speak with our family and my son. Tell
him there are no benefits. Tell his Mom and Dad.

In 16 years, with the greatest medical and pharmaceutical minds in the
country, no one has found a plant that diminishes the nausea like marijuana.

There are plenty of folks in Arizona like me, who don't fit the
profile of a medical marijuana advocate. We are here and we will use
our voices to fight for people like my son. Because to take away my
son's marijuana would be like taking insulin away from a Type 1
diabetic, or taking pain medications away from a cancer patient
because there are some out there who abuse pain medications.

Reform the system where it should be, but do not condemn my family and
my son to a life of desperation rather than decency. Don't criminalize
behavior of my wife, other mothers and fathers, or patients, who seek
only to use the one plant that gives them some quality of life.

To take the one healing plant from the medically needy and criminalize
their desperate need for relief provided my professionally cultivated
marijuana would be the real crime. 
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D