Pubdate: Sun, 11 Aug 2013
Source: Casper Star-Tribune (WY)
Copyright: 2013 Lee Enterprises
Contact:  http://www.trib.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/765
Author: Kelly Byer

WYOMING WEED LAWS LEAVE PATIENTS WITH DIFFICULT CHOICE: SUFFER OR
RISK IMPRISONMENT

A jazz track opens with a mellow piano and bass duet. Then a swelling
cymbal roll.

You hear people coughing, the air conditioner running.

The sound of Bill Evans' live recording of "My Foolish Heart" is even
richer where a man with graying hair sits. He keeps pillows propped on
the back of his living room couch to help with acoustics.

The former music professor designed the stereo system to convert
high-resolution music from digital to analog. Then it's amplified and
pumped through two tower speakers.

"They'll stone you when you are young and able"

Five years ago, the 60-year-old Casper resident, who wished to remain
anonymous for fear of prosecution, experienced spontaneous retinal
detachment in both eyes. He had 25 corrective surgeries, and as a
secondary result, developed glaucoma. Then he lost all vision in his
right eye.

A specialist prescribed Diamox, a diuretic that is typically used for
short-term treatment, to control his eye pressure and preserve the
little sight remaining in his left eye. But the monthly prescription
cost is expensive  about $1,000 without insurance and $100 with
assistance. It's also unpleasant.

Aside from some nausea, the worst side effect is "extreme" ringing in
the ears, he said. It makes it almost impossible to listen to anything.

"That in and of itself is enough to make my one past time
unenjoyable," he said. "That's why I decided to try the marijuana."

When he mentioned the desire to use cannabis during casual
conversation, a longtime friend mentioned connections to a supplier.
The 60-year-old would never have considered it during employment  his
former job had strict policies regarding drug use  but his disability
made him jobless.

He did not want to support drug cartels or smoke pot with pesticides
or other potentially unsafe chemicals, so it reassured him to know his
friend bought the marijuana legally in another state. He accepted the
offer that day.

"The relief is almost immediate," he said.

The high lasts a few hours but the pain goes away for several days,
and his remaining eyesight becomes clearer. There are no unpleasant
side effects, he says. No downside  except the fact it's illegal in
Wyoming.

"They'll stone you when you're trying to be so good"

The Cowboy State still prosecutes marijuana offenses, despite the
growing number of states that have decriminalized or legalized the
drug.

Natrona County District Attorney Mike Blonigen said using cannabis for
medical treatment is no defense for possession. Neither is a legal
purchase in Colorado or Montana.

"Just because they might acquire that legally in another state and
bring it back here, doesn't make it legal here," he said. "And they
can still be arrested; they can still be prosecuted."

Yet, Blonigen said defendants who claim to use marijuana for medical
treatment are few. The cases that have been legitimate, he said, are
dealt with leniently.

In Wyoming, police made 2,254 arrests and spent about $9.15 million
enforcing marijuana laws in 2010. Ninety-three percent of the arrests
were for possession, according to the American Civil Liberties Union
of Wyoming.

Blonigen, though, said most arrests for marijuana possession are made
during unrelated stops, and few extra resources are expended.

"They're mainly just by happenstance," he said. "They're not because
the police go out and work a possession of marijuana case."

An ACLU report released in June shows marijuana-related arrests
nationwide increased between 2001 and 2010. In that decade, law
enforcement made more than 8 million marijuana arrests, 88 percent of
which were for possession.

Linda Burt, executive director of the ACLU in Wyoming, said if the
state won't legalize it, leaders should at least consider
decriminalization.

"We have drugs that are much more dangerous like Vicodin and Oxycodone
and Percocet and morphine," she said. "All of those drugs would be
legal if you had a prescription for them, but marijuana is not."

Cannabis is still a Schedule I drug under federal law, which is
reserved for drugs with a high tendency for abuse and no recognized
medical use. A person caught using marijuana could face fines or jail
time. First offenders may have charges dismissed after completing probation.

For a law-abiding Casper resident with impaired vision and glaucoma,
it proved a tough decision: Take expensive legal medicine, with the
side effects, or use marijuana and risk imprisonment.

"It's a real frustrating thing  do you want to risk your freedom or do
you want to lose your vision?" He said. "It's not a choice you should
have to make."

"They'll stone you when you are set down in your grave"

He's not the only one to make that choice. After a motorcycle accident
in 1997 shattered his pelvis and crushed his left leg from the knee
down, Charlie Lake underwent 13 surgeries that left him in chronic
pain.

He started taking morphine and became addicted. Lake said it caused
"mental anguish" and other health problems until he began using marijuana.

"I was able to manage my pain more effectively," he
said.

He began smoking a year after his accident and stopped in September
2012, when he was arrested for possession. Now he's taking nothing for
the pain -- neither weed nor morphine.

"I would much rather suffer than go through the side effects and
misery of an opiate addiction," he said.

Health care practitioners, legislators and the public have debated the
medicinal use of marijuana for years. The plant has been touted as an
alternative to pharmaceutical drugs and treatments, which may be
ineffective or have unwanted side effects, but the jury is still out
on whether it does more good or harm.

In 2010, researchers at the McGill University Health Centre in
Montreal, Canada, released a study that showed cannabis may relieve
chronic neuropathic pain. Patients who smoked low, 25-milligram doses
of pot with at least 10 percent THC - the drug's active ingredient -
reported reduced pain, improved moods and better sleep.

The following year, the American Medical Association revised its
policies on medical marijuana and requested its removal from the list
of Schedule I drugs. Their report concluded that cannabis relieves
pain, improves appetite and relieves muscle stiffness in patients with
multiple sclerosis, but it also says state regulations may not
adequately regulate the psychoactive drug.

Both studies suggested further research needed to be done to
understand the potential uses of marijuana or its derivatives in medicine.

"They'll stone you just a-like they said they would"

The Casper resident living with glaucoma said he already understands
marijuana's medical benefit.

When both his retinas detached and inner eye pressure developed, his
ophthalmologist refused to prescribe Diamox because the doctor thought
it was unhealthy.

"The pressure continued to the point where the optic nerve died," the
Casper resident said. "So I have no vision in that right eye at all."

Nate Edwards, an ophthalmologist at the Family Vision Clinic in
Casper, said diuretics like Diamox are used in emergency situations
when eye pressure spikes, but not in long-term treatment because they
have more side effects. If a patient's eye pressure remains high,
Edwards said the next step is surgery.

"Usually with surgery, we can decrease pressures tremendously," he
said. "That's kind of the end stage of treatment."

But it wasn't for the 60-year-old Casper resident. Eye drops were not
an option after numerous surgeries caused him to develop an allergic
reaction, so specialists prescribed the diuretic. Then side effects
drove him to marijuana.

But Edwards said there are enough eye drops or pharmaceutical drugs
that effectively reduce pressure, and marijuana has no medical
benefits in glaucoma treatment.

"In order to keep the pressures down to treatment levels, they'd have
to smoke pretty much every 15 to 20 minutes, which would increase the
risk of lung cancer and all the side effects of smoking," he said.

But the Casper resident said he only needs a little to feel relief. He
limits his marijuana use because of the risk in obtaining it and the
cost, although it's still cheaper than his legal prescription. It
costs him $40 to $80 for bud that will last him months.

"I don't care what anybody thinks - what a politician thinks, or what
the [Drug Enforcement Administration] thinks - or anything else about
its efficacy as a medical product," he said. "I know what it does."

"They'll stone you when you're tryin' to keep your
seat"

Wyoming may have strong libertarian leanings, but state leaders have
shown little interest in making marijuana available for medical treatments.

Despite Colorado's recent decision to legalize marijuana and Montana's
nearly 10-year-old medical marijuana program, state Rep. Tim Stubson,
R-Casper, said it's unlikely Wyoming legislators will pursue any
changes unless the issue becomes a priority among voters.

"In my experience, Wyoming has been pretty confident plowing its own
row," he said. "I think this issue is the same. I don't think the
activities of the states around us are going to significantly impact
the decisions that we make."

Stubson's not personally in favor of legalizing medical marijuana
until it is recognized at the federal level because he said it would
be a "slippery slope" to general legalization.

State Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, said it's a topic whose time is
coming, just not yet.

The issue has few champions in the Wyoming Legislature, but Case
doesn't want to be its poster child, for fear of losing his
credibility on other topics.

He agrees with the ACLU, that penalties are too harsh, and said it's
unlikely the federal government will change anything soon. Case sees
it as a state issue because states are paying for enforcement rather
than collecting a marijuana tax.

"I don't have the guts to propose it, but I think it's a realistic
discussion that needs to be on the table," he said.

Keith Goodenough, a former state senator and representative, was the
last legislator to propose legalizing marijuana for medical use in the
early 2000s. He failed five times. Goodenough is a Casper City Council
member.

His proposal made it out of committee in the Senate, but the majority
floor leader never let the full assembly vote. A different approach,
which would have removed marijuana from the Schedule I drug list in
Wyoming, gained approval by the House but failed in the Senate.

Although he calls it "irrational" to arrest and jail people for minor
marijuana offenses, Goodenough never proposed decriminalizing
marijuana. He said his proposals were sometimes misconstrued.

"Any time you deal with the subject, you get nailed with all the
rumor-able offenses," he said.

"They'll stone you and then they'll say, 'Good luck'"

The newest legislative effort to legalize marijuana comes from the
Wyoming chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws (NORML). The group, which formed in April, is
attempting to place an initiative on the 2016 statewide ballot to
legalize hemp and cannabis.

Executive Director Chris Christian said she is in the process of
drafting a petition, with the help of lawyers, to submit to the state.
They want to avoid the legal confusion Colorado's faced by writing a
clear and consistent law.

"We're going to try to do a better job," Christian said. "We have some
precedent to go by now."

The group must collect signatures from 15 percent of the registered
voters who voted in the last statewide election. That would have
required 37,606 signatures for the 2014 election.

Although online signatures can't be submitted in the legislative
process, the group's moveon.org petition for the same cause had
garnered 1,184 signatures by Tuesday. Christian, a Jackson native,
said it helps show state representatives the level of the support for
marijuana legalization.

Weed Wyoming, which is separate from NORML, seeks the same goal. Lake
started the group in August 2012, with chapters in Casper, Riverton,
Lander, Rock Springs and Green River.

In Casper, Weed Wyoming hosts monthly rallies in Conwell Park. The
demonstrations started with Lake in the back of his pick-up truck and
have grown to gatherings of more than 20 people.

"We're trying to do what we can to bring awareness and education," he
said.

The Casper resident, who says medication made his love of music moot,
does what he can. He can't see well enough to drive, but he can still
read with glasses. From his living room couch, he reads online about
legalization efforts and posts related material on Twitter. He e-mails
politicians to promote legislative action but said most requests go
unanswered.

"I'm just one little blind guy here in Casper, but I vote just like
everybody else," the Casper resident said. "At the very least, I
deserve some kind of response."

While he personally thinks cannabis should be regulated, taxed and
legal for everyone, he said simply decriminalizing marijuana or
permitting it for medical use would satisfy him. His advocacy is not a
"smoke screen" for general legalization.

"It's purely selfish," he said. "I don't want to go
blind."

To avoid becoming a target for law enforcement, he generally avoids
association with other advocates. He can't afford to move to a state
where medical marijuana is legal  his family house was paid off before
disability payments became his only income.

So attempting to change the laws in Wyoming, a state he values for its
natural beauty and independence, is his only course of action.

"You would think," he said, "that this would be the first state in the
union to embrace personal liberty about something like this."
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MAP posted-by: Matt