Medical marijuana gains new convert | K Kaufmann | The Desert Sun | April 12, 2006

Riverside County District 3 Supervisor Jeff Stone went into the fourth annual National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics in Santa Barbara last weekend skeptical but open-
minded about the medical value of marijuana.But after two days of presentations by doctors and academic researchers, and talking with patients who use medical cannabis to
relieve a range of symptoms, Stone changed his mind.

The pharmacist, who previously opposed the licensing of dispensaries in the county, volunteered at Tuesday's board meeting to work with county staff on an ordinance to allow them.

"There is medical value to cannabis," said Stone, a pharmacist, in an interview Saturday. "(We are) going to come up with a plan that ensures we have legitimate purveyors of medical marijuana."

Stone's change on the issue impressed medical marijuana advocates like Lanny Swerdlow of Palm Springs, who heads the Marijuana Anti- Prohibition Project."He's a scientist," Swerdlow said. "He went there thinking like a scientist. He learned new things and he's going to apply them to people."

Stone's new views on the issue could help expedite a county ordinance allowing medical marijuana dispensaries, which could in turn serve as a model for Coachella Valley cities also wrestling
with the issue.

California voters passed Proposition 215 in 1996, allowing patients with a doctor's recommendation to use medical marijuana. In 2003, the state Legislature passed Senate Bill 420, setting guidelines for cities and counties to implement the law.

The law calls for counties to issue voluntary identification cards to qualified patients. Riverside County began issuing the cards last December. But under federal law, marijuana is still illegal, and the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled last June in Raich v. Gonzales that federal statutes take precedence over state laws like California's.

The Coachella Valley has two dispensaries currently in operation, CannaHelp in Palm Desert and the Collective Apothecary of Palm Springs, known as CAPS. Indian Wells, Palm Desert and Palm Springs
all have dispensary moratoriums in place, while they work on individual ordinances.

The Palm Springs City Council is set to name a subcommittee to write an ordinance at its meeting today.Philip Drell, director of community development in Palm Desert, said he hopes to have a draft ordinance to the City Council in June.

The county Board of Supervisors voted on a dispensary moratorium last August and recently extended it for another six months.But Stone's request "to work with staff signaled to me his desire to get a good ordinance on the books," said District 4 Supervisor Roy Wilson of Palm Desert. "So I think it's very optimistic."Stone went to the conference on the invitation of medical marijuana users Marty and LaVonne Victor of Temecula.

The conference, organized by Patients Out of Time, a medical marijuana advocacy group based in Virginia, offered "more educational tools on the issue," LaVonne Victor said. "(Stone)
would have a chance to meet other people that are in the field he is in."

He also visited two dispensaries in Santa Barbara, which allows them to operate without a city ordinance. Stone said he was particularly impressed with HortiPharm, a sleek new operation that looks more like an upscale restaurant than a dispensary. "It was a much more professional set up," he said. "Proper set-up ensures legitimacy and professional standards."

Walk A Painful Mile In Their Shoes
Mocking Marijuana's Virtues Is Criminal
by Steve Young

April 11, 2006 /HOLLYWOOD (apj.us)/

Nothing more reveals the damage the broadcast Lords of Loud inflict than actually seeing the faces of those their blather stings. Distancing themselves from the affect of their words doesn't make their culpability any smaller. Same goes for legislators who vote without first looking
at the inhumanity their decisions will cause -- or sometimes worse -- what good their decisions deny. Probably no better example is their kneejerk scare tactic attacks on anything or anyone close to "UniversalHealthcare." When they call it "socialism" (which it isn't) or that we'll lose choice (which we won't), they simply devalue the lives of millions of men, women and children who cannot afford life-saving treatment, let alone preventive medical care.

Bloviators are at their worse when they condemn hope through demonization of the victim. HIV/AIDS funding comes to mind. But those in chronic pain or dealing with the misery of some debilitating disease cannot be so easily dismissed.

This past weekend I partook in the Fourth National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics on the ironically non-smoking-designated campus of Santa Barbara City College. Amongst the thousand in attendance, I may have been the only attendee who did not actually partake. And while second-hand cigarette smoke might kill, the ocean breezes didn't allow the cannabis clouds to hang around long enough for a contact buzz I might plead "blameless" at the next NA meeting.

Packed into the SBCC cafeteria (how"munchie appropriate") were people with terminal illness, debilitating disease and/or chronic pain that fends off all known legal relief while and ignores no demographic, party or station. Multiple-sclerosis sufferers David "Squiggy" Lander and Montel Williams made appearances -- not for show or pay, but to share their stories of suffering and search for relief, stories so familiar to the other attendees. They were all there to hear what nearly all of them already knew: marijuana had helped them survive. Not only survive, but actually live something close to a normal life.

No matter how many stoner/pot jokes flew,the conference dealt with an all-too-serious issue: there are many who need marijuana to be deemed wholly legal and assessable for medicinal purposes. Yet just last year the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the federal government can
prosecute medical marijuana patients, even in states where medical marijuana is legal.

Doctor after doctor, researcher after researcher, victim after victim stepped up to detail what even federal research has confirmed over and over: medical marijuana works where nothing else will. Of course, the stigma of recreational use or its severely questionable standing as a
"gateway drug" makes cannabis an easy target for those who choose not to investigate further.

To be perfectly honest, there are a few talkers, even on the Right, who Libertarianly profess a belief in drug legalization or an end to a failed "War on Drugs" that makes Iraq look like a triumphant walkover. But even then, it's more an economic orconstitutional judgement than a healthcare conviction.

But pain is not political. And it's not about being a stoner, a hippie, a "left coast wacko." It's about making the pain bearable. Unfortunately, those who choose to blare disdain for the victims may never see or understand what the victim is suffering through until they're looking back at it in the mirror.Short of actual compassion, perhaps the only way for critics to understand the pain no "legal" medication can relieve is to feel it themselves. It is a shame that when we speak of walking in other's shoes wenever get past the ankles. And it is tough to know the futility when the
pain is read of but not felt.

I think I've come up with a solution.I've seen reporters jump out of planes orbe on the target side of a police taser. Several newsfolk who go through some personal affliction, bring their audiences in on their firsthand struggle with pain and anguish. Katie Couric brought her Today Show audience along to (and through) her colonosopy - a response to her husband's terminal bout with colon cancer. The fact that Couric's face (and other body accouterments) were fixed to the issue resulted in massively increased awareness of the preventive efficacy of the procedure.

I say that from now on, every Congressman,Senator, Supreme Court Justice or Attorney General who wants tooutlaw or prosecute medical marijuana use, and every talk show host orother opinion monger who decides to shortchange or mock something that people profess to be a life-giving necessity, must be made to feel the same pain and hopelessness the sufferer does for as long as they feel it and for as many times.

Then, just for good measure, they must have their child or parent or spouse suffer the same torment while our pundit is forced to look on at their loved one's agony helplessly.

Perhaps then they might forsake political and opportunistic partisanship for a truly empathetic judgement.'Course, that might be considered torture.Then again, what do you call keeping agonizing pain relief kept away from those who are truly suffering?

Steve Young is a Senior Fellow at theExtreme Far Centrist Foundation' Political Husbandry Conservation Centre and Stereo Repair. In his spare time, he is also an author, comedy writer, columnist, LA talk show host and author of "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful."(What? You STILL haven't bought it? Then visit http://www.greatfailure.com/). You can also check out the satirical side of Steve every Sunday in the LA Daily News.