Pubdate: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA) Copyright: 1999 San Jose Mercury News Contact: 750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, CA 95190 Fax: (408) 271-3792 Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/ Author: KEITH VINES Note: Keith Vines is a San Francisco prosecutor who uses marijuana under state law to combat AIDS symptoms. REMOVE BARRIERS TO MEDICINAL POT AS a prosecutor, I send drug traffickers to prison. As an AIDS patient, I use marijuana as medicine under state law. Sadly, the federal government is bent on criminalizing seriously ill people like me. In March, the prestigious Institute of Medicine concluded that smoking marijuana can alleviate cancer and AIDS symptoms; the institute recommended patients be given immediate legal access to marijuana under a ``compassionate use'' program. However, federal Health and Human Services guidelines, which go into effect Dec. 1, reject compassionate use and are too cumbersome to enable necessary research. Seriously ill people will continue to face arrest and imprisonment, while potentially lifesaving research is bogged down in red tape. We can provide medicinal marijuana without compromising our anti-drug efforts or jeopardizing law enforcement. Drug czar Barry McCaffrey predicted an epidemic of teenage marijuana use when California voters legalized medicinal marijuana in 1996. Instead, teenage marijuana use in California is now less than the national average and declining, according to federal surveys. Since 1985, I've been an assistant district attorney in San Francisco, where I have successfully prosecuted numerous drug cases. In 1993, I was diagnosed with AIDS wasting syndrome. I suffered a devastating weight loss of 45 pounds. My body was disintegrating. I couldn't sit in a chair because I was sitting on bone. My treatment with a growth hormone to combat the wasting needed three high-calorie meals daily to work. I had no appetite, and couldn't eat. My physician recommended Marinol, the prescription THC pill. It knocked me out for hours and didn't stimulate my appetite. I was dying. My physician and I discussed the benefits and risks of smoking marijuana, and I decided to try it. It worked. With my appetite restored, I could eat, and with the growth hormone I regained precious lost weight. I was able to control the dose so it didn't incapacitate me. I don't use marijuana recreationally. I don't like being stoned, but I do like being alive. People who suffer from serious illnesses who need marijuana are not smoking to get high but to get healthy. It is a tragedy -- no, an outrage -- that federal officials at the White House, in Congress and at Health and Human Services insist that the drug war ought to extend to people who use marijuana to help them survive and fight terrible illnesses. Congress should not interfere with state and District of Columbia medicinal marijuana laws, and the federal government should create a federal compassionate use program. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart