Club Medicine

Support for medical marijuana is growing, but many patients are not waiting for a change in policy.

Jim Christie from the April 1996 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

While Peron's in-your-face style may raise eyebrows, he deserves respect for his organizational and political skills. The club also serves as headquarters for Californians for Compassionate Use, which is trying to get a medical marijuana initiative on the 1996 ballot. The most important provision of the initiative would simply recognize what's already going on between many patients and doctors: "No physician in the State of California shall be punished, or denied any right or privilege, for recommending marijuana to a patient for treatment of nausea, appetite loss, chronic pain, spasticity, glaucoma, arthritis, migraine, or other intractable illnesses for which marijuana provides relief, providing that such medicinal use of marijuana would, in such physician's professional medical judgment, be of benefit to his or her patient."

There's reason to believe that the 600,000 signatures needed to get the initiative on the ballot will be gathered if people line up to what they've been telling pollsters. Americans are generally sympathetic to patients seeking medical marijuana. (In fact, many are surprised to learn it is not legally available.) A November 1995 poll commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union found that 79 percent of Americans think letting physicians prescribe marijuana is a "good idea." Eighty-five percent of respondents said they would favor making marijuana legally available for medical uses where it has proven effective.

In California, where Gov. Pete Wilson has twice vetoed medical marijuana bills, a March 1995 poll by David Binder Research found that 66 percent of registered voters support legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes (compared to 22 percent who favored legalization of all marijuana use by adults). Support in some parts of the state is even stronger. In San Francisco in 1991, about 80 percent of voters approved a referendum urging the legalization of medical marijuana. In 1992, 77 percent of Santa Cruz County voters favored pot by prescription. The state legislature has repeatedly expressed support for the idea by large margins, as have county and city boards of supervisors around the state. Major California newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Oakland Tribune, and the Orange County Register, have editorialized in favor of marijuana use for medical purposes.

The medical marijuana movement continues to attract support from conservatives as well as liberals and libertarians. Journalists such as William F. Buckley Jr. and Richard Brookhiser have long argued that patients should have access to pot, and on the campaign trail conservatives are coming to share that view. During a July meeting with the editorial board of The Charlotte Observer, Republican presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan said the use of marijuana as a medicine should be a matter between patient and physician. "If a doctor indicated to his patient that this was the only way to alleviate certain painful symptoms," Buchanan told the Observer, "I would defer to the doctor's judgment."

The question that elicited this response was submitted by Rick Doblin, a Charlotte resident who heads the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which supports pot by prescription. Buchanan's answer "was eminently reasonable," Doblin says. "We've done a lot of lobbying of sympathetic Republicans, but they were afraid to take a public position. When Buchanan said that, it was refreshing."

One person in particular found Buchanan's statement more than refreshing and would later ask the candidate to confirm it. George McMahon of Bode, Iowa, suffers from Nail Patella Syndrome, a painful and terminal neurological and bone disorder. He is one of eight Americans who may legally smoke marijuana, provided by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. McMahon smokes the marijuana to ease the pain caused by his condition and by the numerous operations he has undergone. He has another reason to want marijuana rescheduled so that it can prescribed: His 24-year-old daughter also has Nail Patella Syndrome.

At an October campaign stop in Bode, McMahon asked Buchanan what he thought about pot by prescription. According to the Storm Lake Pilot Tribune, Buchanan reversed himself, saying doctors should not prescribe pot because it's a worse drug than alcohol. But when McMahon told Buchanan about his condition, the candidate said, "If everything you say is true, and I choose to believe you, I would support you in a second." What wasn't reported by the local newspaper was McMahon's meeting with Buchanan after the campaign stop officially ended. "I went and talked to him later, and he said he couldn't understand why the DEA was controlling my medicine," McMahon says. "He seemed very sincere to me."

Less prominent conservatives also support medical marijuana. A conservative Christian from Poulsbo, Washington, began using marijuana years ago, at the recommendation of his oncologist, while undergoing treatment for testicular cancer. The man, who asked me not to use his name, described himself as a supporter of his area's Republican state representative, also a conservative Christian, and a backer of a statewide anti-gay rights initiative. "I think I have an opportunity as a conservative and a Christian to bring some credibility to the [medical marijuana] issue and bridge a gap," he says.

Although medical marijuana may seem a natural issue for the left, the conditions that can be treated with pot affect people across the political spectrum. Personal experiences with the medical benefits of marijuana have a powerful impact not only on patients but on their relatives, friends, and acquaintances. Their testimony makes medical marijuana a humanitarian issue that transcends partisan differences. Supporters of Barney Frank's medical marijuana bill note that it reads a lot like a 1981 bill co-sponsored by a second-term congressman from Georgia named Newt Gingrich.