HURTING DR. FEELGOOD
How Oregon Punished A Doctor For Legally Recommending Medical Marijuana
The Oregon Board of Medical Examiners dispensed some pain to Dr. Phillip Leveque last month, suspending the 79-year-old osteopath's medical license for 90 days and fining him $5,000 for signing medical marijuana applications without examining patients. Under Oregon's 1998 medical marijuana law, patients who want to light up legally must first receive verification from a doctor that they suffer from one of nine medical conditions, ranging from AIDS to premenstrual syndrome. An unrepentant Leveque plans to spend his time off lecturing throughout the state about medical marijuana. Leveque recently talked with New York writer David Wallis.
REASON: Oregon's medical board suspended your medical license for 90 days and fined you $5000 for signing applications for medical marijuana "without examining the patient, conducting medical tests, maintaining an adequate medical chart, reviewing possible contraindicators, or conferring with other medical care providers." Are you guilty as charged?
Phillip Leveque: The Oregon medical marijuana law did not require that I see the patient or do an examination on them. If it had said so, I would have done it. And for the first 900 patients I recommended, the medical marijuana office approved 900 [applications]. All of a sudden, they say "Oh, we made a big mistake 900 times." Nobody makes a mistake 900 times.
REASON: Why not fight the suspension then?
Leveque: If I didn't accept that they would have revoked my medical license.
REASON: You've approved more applications than for medical marijuana in Oregon...
Leveque: The figure is more than 50 percent [of the total number of applications]--eight times more than any doctor in the state.
REASON: What does that say about your colleagues?
Leveque: They are scared to death of George W. Bush. They are scared of John Ashcroft. In my state in particular, they're scared of the Oregon Board of Medical Examiners.
REASON: John Ashcroft has warned doctors that they could face prosecuted for prescribing medical marijuana. Would you go to jail for your beliefs?
Leveque: I'm not doing anything illegal. I don't prescribe marijuana. I don't approve of marijuana. I don't recommend marijuana.
REASON: What do you mean you don't recommend it?
Leveque: If a patient tells me that he has one of the nine medical conditions which are acceptable by the state of Oregon [to be treated with marijuana], and it helps his medical problem, that's fine and dandy. William Osler, who was considered the father of American medicine, said "Your patient will tell you what's wrong with them."
REASON: Are there more than nine ailments that you would treat with marijuana if allowed to?
Leveque: A lot of veterans tell me that for post-traumatic stress disorder, it's better than anything else anyone has ever gave them. Also attention deficit disorder.
REASON: Pot helps people concentrate?
Leveque: Well, I guess so. It's also an excellent anti-anxiety drug.
REASON: Can you tell any difference between patients seeking medical marijuana and your other patients?
Leveque: These people are sicker, more disabled, more destitute than any patients that I saw in my regular medical practice.
REASON: But if some of your patients are in fact suckering you, do you care?
Leveque: Absolutely. I am deathly afraid of ringers being thrown at me by [regulators], and I am very, very cautious. It's just like the question, "How do porcupines make love?" Very carefully. I know that these people are out to get me.
REASON: So why take the risk?
Leveque: My Hippocratic Oath requires that I take care of my patients. And if marijuana is the way to take care of my patients, that's what I'm going to do. Any doctor who will not sign an application for medical marijuana is [guilty] of malpractice.
REASON: Did you ever expect to become a political advocate?
Leveque: I have a spinal cord injury myself. I had prostate surgery about 11 years ago, and they gave me too much spinal anesthesia, damaging my nerves going to my feet and tailbone. My feet are on fire all the time. When you walk you feel pressure. When I walk I feel fire. And when I sit down--fire. I have pain 24 hours a day. The only way I can escape from it is by taking a triple dose of sleeping pills at bedtime.
REASON: Why not smoke pot for your pain?
Leveque: If I did I would have a target on my front and back, and every cop in Oregon would be hassling the hell out of me. About 12 years ago, one of my smart-aleck sons gave me a loaded bong for Christmas and dared me to light it up. I took a couple of hits off the damn thing, I don't know if I had some bad grass, but I told him, "What do you see in this stuff, anyhow?"
THREE VIEWS: THE OREGON
MEDICAL MARIJUANA PROGRAM
The air still hasn't cleared over the issue of medical marijuana, despite passage of a 1998 act. One doctor feels the heat, while activists rally for improved access.
1. Give People Access, Not Red Tape
by John Sajo
Marijuana is a safe, effective medicine. Patients who can benefit from it should be able to get it.
Oregon voters were right to pass the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act in 1998. Since then, evidence has mounted showing that marijuana helps patients suffering from a wide range of ailments. For many patients, marijuana works better than more expensive pharmaceutical drugs.
Some cancer patients report that marijuana is the only thing that controls the nausea caused by their chemotherapy. For some glaucoma patients, marijuana is the only thing that keeps them from going blind. For many chronic pain patients, medical marijuana allows them to end or reduce their use of dangerous drugs such as morphine and Vicodin. This allows them to function far better, which is wonderful for them and their families.
Since the act took effect, more than 3,500 patients have been qualified to use medical marijuana by nearly 800 Oregon doctors. Oregon's law has allowed these patients to choose which medicine to use. There have been no reports of any significant adverse reactions to using marijuana as medicine.
The problem with the act is that it does not create a supply of medical marijuana. Instead, it requires sick and dying patients to grow their own medicine. This hasn't worked and never will. Some lucky patients have a caregiver who can successfully grow marijuana for them, but most patients have struggled unsuccessfully with gardening and resort to the black market if they can afford it.
Another problem with the act is that the health department has failed to follow the law and imposes so much red tape on participants that many patients avoid the program.
The act requires the department to issue registry cards within 30 days to patients who submit complete applications. The department virtually never meets this deadline, and patients have been arrested as a result of not having a card. This is intolerable.
Other departmental decisions can only be characterized as foot dragging. The level of service is unacceptable for a program that is completely self-funding. Given that marijuana seems to be useful for so many conditions, it is disappointing that the department has done nothing to document the positive results that many patients are achieving.
The biggest problem with medical marijuana is the federal government. Voters in 10 states have passed laws legalizing medical marijuana, but Congress refuses to budge from the outdated "reefer madness" position that criminalizes all use.
The medical use of marijuana is not going to stop. Far too many patients know that it helps them far too much. It is time for our leaders to follow the people on this issue.
The Life With Dignity Committee is sponsoring a statewide initiative petition for the November ballot that would expand the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act. Soon, we will begin passing petitions and expect to get the required 67,000 legal signatures to become eligible for the November ballot.
This initiative will create licensed dispensaries, regulated by the health department, where qualified patients can purchase their medicine in a safe environment.
The initiative also would make numerous other changes in the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act that would cut through some of the red tape that has denied patients the choices they should have. Marijuana is medicine. Patients should be able to get it.
John Sajo is the director of Voter Power and a chief petitioner of the Life With Dignity petition.
2. My Responsibility Is To Help Sick People
by Dr. Phillip Leveque
The medical marijuana hullabaloo is not about patient care. It is all about money! The money not spent on expensive prescription drugs.
Marijuana is one of the safest medically active substances known to man. It is easy to grow and safe to use. But it isn't taxed, legally sold, patented, promoted or protected by big-money lobbyists and multibillion-dollar out-of-state corporations, as are big tobacco, alcohol and "legal" prescription drugs.
I'm just an old medical college professor with 30 years of teaching pharmacology and toxicology, turned country doctor for 10 years, with far more education on the effects of drugs than most.
Cannabis has often been called a miracle drug because of its effectiveness in the treatment of pain and such a wide path of diseases. It has been used in medicine for at least 5,000 years. Marijuana is even mentioned in the Bible, Exodus 30:23, when God ordered Moses to make a holy oil, composed of myrrh, sweet cinnamon and kaneh bosm ( cannabis ).
Marijuana is well-known and used in medicine worldwide. It was one of the most widely used medicines in America before being legally banned in 1937. Oregon voters approved medical marijuana in 1998. Eight states have followed.
Oregon patients can now apply to the state, for an annual fee of $150, for a card authorizing their legal use of marijuana for their own medical purposes. Every application must be signed by a physician confirming that, in his or her opinion, the applicant is suffering from an ailment for which the state has approved the use of marijuana for treatment.
Doctors do not prescribe medical marijuana. The state approves all medical marijuana cards.
The state had anticipated only about 500 applications but already has issued more than 3,500 cards and is months behind in approving new applications. And now the state has added more delay to its multifarious approval processes by requiring a physician's physical exam of all applicants, which I now do. Why?
The state has approved marijuana in the treatment of nine diseases, including cancer. All require a medical specialist for detection, not just a regular physical exam. Surely the state's public health officer hasn't the time or staff with the expertise to review thousands of physical exams.
I'm but one of nearly 800 doctors who have signed medical marijuana applications. By far, I have examined the most patients: Thus, the state has singled me out, publicly attacked me and threatened my license, even though the law says physicians cannot be prosecuted for giving their opinion. Their goal is to scare other doctors in an attempt to kill medical marijuana in Oregon.
The state seems to be saying, "We don't care what the voters want," while ignoring the real victims: the forgotten thousands of Oregonians, the paraplegic vets and others who medically need and want to use marijuana "legally" as an effective alternative medicine for the relief of their pain rather than using expensive and often harmful prescription painkillers. The state doesn't care.
But, thank God, others do. And thanks to several brave doctors, hundreds of dedicated advocates and the majority of Oregon voters, there are now more than 3,500 Oregonians legally suffering less medical misery than before. To which I say, "Hurrah!" For that is what doctors should do.
Phillip Leveque, a doctor of osteopathy, says he has signed more than 1,600 medical marijuana card applications. He lives in Molalla.
3. State Fine-Tunes Its Nascent System
by Dr. Grant Higginson
In 1998, Oregon voters passed a law to protect seriously ill patients from prosecution for using marijuana as medicine.
The Oregon Medical Marijuana Act is 3 years old, but strong feelings and confusion about it still exist. As a public health officer in the state Department of Human Services, I oversee the medical marijuana program and want to clarify some facts.
The act grants legal protection to qualified patients. Those who are registered for the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program are issued a card to show they have met requirements for the legal use of medical marijuana.
To qualify for a card, an applicant must be an Oregon resident and suffer from one of nine listed debilitating medical conditions. An attending physician must document the patient's medical condition and confirm that the patient may benefit from medical marijuana.
The law allows patients to designate a primary caregiver to legally assist in growing and administering medical marijuana. The law includes a petition process for adding new medical conditions to the list when there is supporting scientific and clinical evidence.
The act gave responsibility for creating the registry system to the Department of Human Services. From the beginning, our goal has been to operate a program that is accountable to patients and the public. Here is how we interpret the law:
Marijuana is a legitimate medication for some patients, and both they and their physicians are legally protected from prosecution for its use and for discussing its use.
Medical marijuana use is restricted to patients who have one or more of the medical conditions named in the law.
The decision of whether to use marijuana as medicine is made by the patient with his or her attending physician.
Restrictions reduce the potential for abuse of the law and ensure that medical marijuana is not diverted to illegal purposes.
For two years, the program worked as intended. Almost 600 patients registered in the first year, and more than 300 physicians participated. We added one medical condition to the list.
In 2001, we discovered that an attending physician's signature had been forged on seven applications. We immediately contacted law enforcement and conducted a stringent internal review. This resulted in changes to our management of the program.
We also found that there had been a sharp increase in the number of patients and that one physician had signed documentation for 1,642 people, about 40 percent of the applicants. The act states that the attending physician must have "primary responsibility for the care and treatment of the applicant." We questioned whether one individual could fulfill this role for so many patients.
Subsequently, we filed new rules to better define attending physician requirements:
The doctor must review the patient's medical history, conduct a physical exam, provide for follow-up care and document this in the patient's medical record. The rules give the state authority to review medical records when we question whether a legitimate physician-patient relationship exists. Under these rules, about 300 applications were denied because of insufficient documentation.
Patients, advocates and policy-makers have expressed a range of perspectives on these recent changes. Some think that we are becoming too intrusive and erecting barriers to qualified patients. Others think that we should be more restrictive. Our goal is to achieve a balance of providing quality service for patients the act was meant to serve while ensuring that only legitimate patients receive registration cards.
NOTE: Grant Higginson is the state public health officer at the Oregon Department of Human Services.
MARIJUANA PROHIBITION INSANE PUBLIC POLICY
Marijuana. Can you think of a more polarizing word? Say it to someone, with no further context. The listener will recoil in disgust or fear, or (s)he'll grin. Speak more definitively about the cannabis plant, and most listeners will reveal only the most rudimentary knowledge of the world's most polarizing herb.
Public school teachers are permitted only to speak of the evils of cannabis, forbidden to teach its 5,000-plus years of history of service to man. Politicians spout absurdity after slander when they speak of it at all. Misinformed people are moved to anger, threaten violence, or wax childish ("Oh, wow!") when the subject confronts them.
Within this melee of babble, a large and growing number of credible people are expressing doubt about the efficacy of marijuana prohibition. The politicians and their sycophants accuse us of advocating "giving drugs to babies." They say we're "supporting terrorism." They even make absurd statements like State Rep. Stan Adelstein made at a speech to the United Campus Ministries luncheon at South Dakota School of Mines & Technology on Nov. 22, 2001:
"I know the marijuana laws work, because only one of my three sons smoked marijuana. The other two didn't smoke it, because it's illegal. They told me so."
Adelstein refused to answer when asked if he thought his son who smoked marijuana should have gone to prison for it, as millions of others have.
Fact is, Adelstein's family is squarely in the mainstream. The National Institute on Drug Abuse's annual national household survey continually says that about one-third of adults in the U.S. have smoked marijuana. Yet, we continue:
- - Arresting people at the rate of one every 45 seconds for possession or sale of marijuana.
- - Confiscating folks' cars, houses, cash and children for mere suspicion of trafficking in marijuana. If they're convicted, we throw them in prison, also.
- - Paying snitches to create marijuana crimes so that law enforcement can confiscate even more property and children.
- - Allowing law enforcement agencies to keep most of the plunder they steal, thus perpetuating the vicious and counterproductive cycle.
- - Preventing legal access to marijuana for sick, disabled and dying people who currently benefit from it, albeit illegally.
Caught up in this insanity is industrial hemp, which has a potential worldwide market of $500 billion or more, but which is banned from production in the United States (but allowed in Canada and 30 other nations.) Even more insanely and cruelly, the politicians maintain that there is no medical use for cannabis, in spite of disagreement from thousands of doctors and tens of thousands of patients.
How arrogant and stupid to make the statement that an herb has "no medical use." A fifth-grader wouldn't even make such a blanket statement about tomatoes or horseradish. Here is the simple truth. Cannabis was first taxed out of the market, then made illegal in the United States in order to benefit the stockholders in a large consortium of industries which now do not have to face competition from industrial hemp. For that purpose, the politicians are willing to imprison millions and cruelly deny medical relief to tens of thousands of sick people.
When one understands that industrial hemp can be used for any purpose served by trees, cotton or flax, and petroleum, and that hemp seed is the most nutritious single food item in the world, one begins to understand the scope of the industries served by keeping it illegal. One begins to grasp whose ox will be gored by re-establishment of industrial hemp at the forefront of American farm products.
These are some of the reasons I've staked my life, my possessions, and my honor on exposing the truth about cannabis, knowing that, like countless others, I could be stopped, "found" in possession of something illegal, and imprisoned at the whim of the politicians. It's just one more of the cruel truths of the so-called "war on drugs": that innocent people are sometimes silenced by police who frame them by "finding" drugs on them. Cops have unlimited access to drugs to use for such purposes. It's also sad that we must paint all policemen and women with the same brush, because the bad cops' and the good cops' uniforms look the same.
And it is for these reasons that SoDakNORML organized the Rapid City segment of the Million Marijuana March, an educational event being held in over 160 cities worldwide today. We're appealing to governments everywhere to stop all cannabis arrests, to stop lying about cannabis, to release cannabis as medicine to sick people, and to stop imprisoning people for simply trying to feel better.
There's more good information about cannabis on the Internet than just about any other subject. Simply inquire "hemp," "cannabis," or "marijuana" on any search engine. For a tragic laugh, see what the major disseminators of misinformation, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and the Parents for a Drug-Free America (whose largest funder is Anheuser-Busch) have to say on the subject.
It's time for all good people to help end this horrible cycle. Civilian and soldier, cop and just-folks alike, we must hold our local politicians and our federal delegations accountable for the carnage and economic damage created by marijuana prohibition.
US IL: OPED: Feds are busting the wrong 'drug ring'
Pubdate: Wed, 07 Nov 2001
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2001 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact: ctc-TribLetter@Tribune.com
Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Author: Dianne Donovan
Note: Dianne Donovan is a senior editor at the Tribune
FEDS ARE BUSTING THE WRONG "DRUG RING"
Whew! Californians can rest easy these days, secure in the knowledge that the U.S. Justice Department has mobilized a crack team of enforcers to protect them from the danger their midst.
The Bush administration has instructed federal agents in the state to weed out a secret society of lawbreakers whose malfeasance is particularly insidious because they look so ordinary.
They look like grandmas and promising young men and moms and dads and the girl next door. And they look like that because that's who they are.
But the ones the feds are going after are sick. Not like "California sickos" (now that would be a project for the government to tackle), but sick as in cancerous, as in AIDS-afflicted. Sick as in throwing up after every bite, shaking, crying, excruciatingly painful chemo death- wish sick. The only thing that relieves their suffering - and there's precious little argument on this - is marijuana.
A few puffs can bring blessed relief, it can mean a respite from pain, a meal digested.
The problem is that these folks aren't exactly into hanging out on street corners trading Cheech and Chong jokes and anteing up for a nickel bag. So what they have done is form cooperatives to grow their own stuff or join medical marijuana clubs to keep the price down and to keep the sick and the dying off the streets.
The whole thing is so wholesome that one club in Los Angeles, providing marijuana for 900 patients, is a member of the local Chamber of Commerce. Or was - until last month, when federal agents raided the joint.
This was along about the same time they physically uprooted a garden of plants owned by patients, like some perverse cross between Carrie Nation and Martha Stewart run amok.
So here we are, in the middle of a war against terrorists the government can't seem to find, puzzled and scared by a spreading and potentially deadly bacteria the government can't seem to stop and reeling from a recession the government still is denying.
What's a federal agency to do? Go after dying people smoking pot! Kind of makes me wonder if they are looking for a fight they can win.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department told The New York Times that the raids in California are proof that "we have not lost our priorities in other areas since Sept. 11." Well, that's a relief.
I'd hate to think the most devastating attack on this country in its history might have put the medical marijuana raids on the back burner. Wonder what's next on the priority list? How about a mass closing of homeless shelters that aren't up to code?
Meanwhile, as the feds are busting up medical marijuana groups that are legal, even encouraged, in some states, Republicans in the House were able to hold the line against federal agents manning security at the nation's airports.
That would be Big Government. That would be an unwarranted intrusion into the private sector.
How much more private can you get than the doctor-patient relationship? How much bigger can government get than ordering its agents to run roughshod over a state's right to do what it thinks best for the health and well-being of its citizens?
And California isn't alone.
Seven other states have legalized medical marijuana; Nevada went so far as to say that the state has to make sure patients can obtain the drug. So now Nevada is asking the federal government to provide the state with the stash.
What if they'd put that provision in the law legalizing prostitution? It's an image I don't wish to entertain.
But talk about coordination: It's now altogether possible that Nevada could get its marijuana from, say, the Food and Drug Administration and then the Justice Department could go in and confiscate it. Sort of like the CIA and the FBI work together now. Oh, and if federal agents are so keen to bust up drug rings, I know a few street corners they could hang around in Chicago.
I wish to disagree with one particular statement made in your medical marijuana editorial ("Compassionate liberalism on pot," Examiner view, Nov. 7).
It says that if the federal government tries to close the clubs, "it will have ended an experiment California undertook in 1996 with the passage of Prop. 215, the Compassionate Use Act."
Proposition 215 is the law because it was the will of the voters of California. It was not and never will be "an experiment."
On the other hand, if the federal government ever successfully shuts down the cannabis clubs, the experiment that will end is known as "democracy."
Ray Carlson
Redwood City
DRUG WAR VICTIMIZES THE ILL
Immediately following the controversial medical marijuana club raids mentioned in your editorial on medical marijuana, Drug Enforcement Administration head Asa Hutchinson has been making the media rounds and complaining that the war on terrorism is diverting resources from the war on drugs.
The $50 billion war on consensual vices seems more ludicrous than ever now that America faces the all-too-real threat of international terrorism.
The shift in priorities didn't stop the DEA from recently raiding a Los Angeles medical marijuana club renowned for its stringent requirements, thorough documentation, and the inability of DEA agents to conduct sting operations by posing as patients. The 900-plus patients who depended on the club to help them combat nausea and keep food down will now be forced to buy their medicine on the street.
Illicit drug use is the only public health issue wherein key stakeholders are not only ignored, but actively persecuted and incarcerated. In terms of the California raids, those stakeholders happen to be cancer and AIDS patients.
Robert Sharpe, Program Officer, The Lindesmith Center Drug Policy Foundation
Washington, D.C.
DRUG WAR IS A DISTRACTION
Has anyone asked the Drug Enforcement Administration how many terrorists have crossed our borders while its agents were preying on sick and dying Americans in California, where medical cannabis is legal?
It is galling that, as the Bush administration beefs up our borders, agents and the newly assigned National Guard are bragging about all the drug arrests they are making. Every agent who has to leave the border to prosecute a drug case is one less preventing terror.
When is this nation going to see that armistice in the drug war is the fastest way to responsibly reallocate limited professional police resources to protect Americans from terrorism?
Can America afford these two wars?
It is beyond reason that House Speaker Dennis Hastert has lamented that narco-terrorists have financed atrocities with drug sales, but his congressional leadership still brings America a Controlled Substances Act that effectively licenses the gangsters and narco-terrorists.
Pat Rogers
Allentown, Pa.
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