Medical Marijuana Patients' News & Views

This Super Bowl marked the debut of yet another mindless continuation in the ongoing anti-marijuana advertising campaign. This commercial starts off looking like it's for a home pregnancy kit -- a young couple is in the bathroom, holding a pregnancy tester, nervously awaiting the results. Slowly, the camera pans away to show a young girl huddled on a bed crying; the words "They will be the youngest grandparents in town" flash across the screen. The commercial ends with a voiceover stating, "Marijuana impairs your judgment. It's more harmful than we all thought," while the phrase "Knowledge, the anti-drug" is displayed in the background.

It seems the only goal of this ongoing campaign is to top the previous commercials, in terms of how ridiculous, unfounded and unbelievable they are. The Web site for the sponsor of these ads, Freevibe, goes for a hip, we're-cool-so-kids-please-listen-to-us look, with stylized graphics and photos. The site also attempts to explain the baffling logic behind such commercials as the teen pregnancy one.

The page begins "You've heard it before, someone goes out, gets high on marijuana, lowers their boundaries and does something they really, really regret afterwards.

"Unfortunately, this happens more than you think." I'm sorry, but the last time I heard of someone getting high and doing something they regretted the next day, it involved ordering one slice of pizza too many, or laughing in someone's face because they were too high to control themselves.

Truth be told, I've never heard of weed being an aphrodisiac before; for most, it has the opposite effect.

In fact, an old anti-marijuana campaign, based on different lies and even more outrageous claims once said that smoking marijuana could lower a man's sperm count, and even make him "turn homosexual." Personally, I don't know any homosexuals who go out there and impregnate young teenage girls, or, as was implied in one commercial, get a girl so high that she passes out so that he can fondle her unconscious body. Usually, that's what happens with alcohol.

A 32-year-old Victoria man who pleaded guilty to possession of less than three kilograms of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking walked out of Victoria provincial court Friday free of a criminal record.

"I feel amazing and greatly relieved," said Philippe Lucas outside court.

"This has been a heavy weight on my shoulders for the last 20 months."

Lucas received an absolute discharge on a matter that was closely watched by those seeking the decriminalization of marijuana. Lucas is the president of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society, an organization that provides marijuana to its members for medical purposes. The society has operated from a commercially zoned site in Oak Bay for 14 months with tacit police approval.

But the attitude of the police changed when Lucas reported a break-in and that one kilogram of marijuana had been stolen.

While the marijuana was recovered, Lucas was charged with possession when he claimed ownership.

Judge Robert Higinbotham said the case must be viewed in a broad context. "To date the combination of federal regulations and the College of Physicians trepidation has made it extremely difficult for applicants to obtain approval to use marijuana.

"Further, the federal government has so far been unable to ensure any legal supply of marijuana to those whom Health Canada thinks need it as therapy. This is a particular hardship for those who cannot grow it."

Lucas is articulate, intelligent and fluently bilingual in both official languages, noted Higinbotham.

"He has ... become an important resource both in Canada and our local community on the issue of the medicinal use of marijuana. He has consulted with, and influenced, both federal cabinet ministers and local city councillors.

"During the course of this hearing I was made aware through correspondence and video evidence that he is highly regarded by these levels of government as a source of information on the subject of the medicinal use of marijuana."

Lucas contracted hepatitis C at age 12 through a post-surgical blood transfusion. He only found out about his illness when he was screened to work as a child-care worker.

Symptoms of nausea and general malaise set in soon after and Lucas started using marijuana to remain comfortable.

He now has government permission to grow and consume marijuana.

Crown prosecutor Lori McMorran asked for a fine rather than a jail sentence.

Defence counsel John Conroy asked for an absolute discharge on the basis that Lucas sold marijuana for compassionate purposes, not greed, and that the society kept careful and accurate records of both inventory and finances.

The society took reasonable steps to ensure only those people referred by doctors became members and that the surrounding community was not at undue risk, Conroy said.

This case has no bearing on those who want to use marijuana on a recreational basis.

Higinbotham said the case "ought not to be viewed as relevant to the debate over the legal prescription against the recreational use of marijuana.

"In the medicinal sense, the drug clearly has value, and this value probably outweighs the risks to the individual and the community."

An absolute discharge is appropriate in this case, Higinbotham said, because he needs no rehabilitation, which is normally done through a conditional sentence or probation order.

There has been no harm done to victims or the community, the judge said.

"In fact, quite the contrary is true, according to the evidence," Higinbotham said.

He stated that Lucas has a well-developed sense of responsibility, as demonstrated by his guilty plea, his honest acknowledgment of what he has done and his principled arguments before the court.

Copyright2002Times Colonist (Victoria)

Did the events of September 11 change America? Apparently not. One constant has been the ability of opportunists to exploit the tragedy. We've kept a list of behavior that went beyond bad taste into the realm of "what were they thinking?" Among the many examples: A few days after planes flew into the WTC and the Pentagon, a cremation society ran an ad illustrated by a line drawing of the twin towers.

Then there was the porn company that offered for sale a videotape called Vengeance, with the promise that all proceeds would go to the Red Cross. Then Detroit appropriated a hero's last words ("Let's roll") to inspire us to buy GM gas guzzlers (Keep America Rolling). We watched the government wrap the term homeland security around every pork project from farm subsidies ( keep America eating ) to a bogus economic-stimulus package ( keep America shopping ). But the trend peaked during the Super Bowl, when the Office of National Drug Control Policy tried to link casual drug use with world terrorism in a series of television commercials.

"Where do terrorists get their money?" asked a voiceover as the camera showed an Osama clone buying AK-47s, fake passports and plastique explosives. "If you buy drugs, some of it might come from YOU."

The feds spent nearly $3.5 million to place the spots. In the weeks that followed, more money went to sponsor ads in 293 newspapers. Over a picture of a slightly stoned youth, the copy read: "Yesterday afternoon I did my laundry, went for a run and helped torture someone's dad." The text over a shot of a young girl is similar: "Last weekend I washed my car, hung out with a few friends and helped murder a family in Colombia. C'mon, it was a party." Another helpful teen claimed to be an accessory after the fact in the killing of a judge.

The tag line at the bottom of the ads directs the curious or guilty to theantidrug.com, an official website that provides yet more propaganda, some of it unintentionally hilarious: "If you are using drugs in America, whether you're shooting heroin, snorting cocaine, taking ecstasy or sharing a joint in your friend's backyard, evidence is mounting that what you're doing may be connected to events far beyond your existence."

Heavy, man. Feeling connected to events far beyond their existence is one reason people take drugs, as anyone who saw the Grateful Dead perform can attest. But the folks at theantidrug.com hold the recreational drug user responsible for much worse.

How many of the 28 organizations identified as terrorists by the State Department are funded by illegal drugs?

According to theantidrug.com, 12. How much did the Taliban make from the sale of heroin? Some $40 million to $50 million. The site fails to mention that just months before September 11, the U.S. government pledged a similar amount to reward the Taliban for eradicating the poppy crop. Where would that money have gone? Yesterday's ally in the war on drugs is today's terrorist and tomorrow's world leader.

The British director who made the spots boasted of the "unprecedented" fact checking between the copywriters and the FBI, DEA, CIA and the Departments of Defense and State over such niggling details as the going price of AK-47 assault rifles. Certainly, given the war on drug's past history with truth, unprecedented was the right word.

None of the ads touch on the basic civics lesson of the war on drugs. Prohibition creates astronomical profits. Our misguided war on drugs has created the ready cash that corrupts governments and creates havoc. Make drugs a health problem, rather than a legal one, and the prices would drop.

We don't have the drug office's $180 million advertising budget, nor the services of giant Ogilvy and Mather, which created the Super Bowl campaign. But here are a few ads we'd like to see:

John Ashcroft in front of a cloaked statue of justice: "Today I held a prayer meeting at the office, issued another red alert in the war on terrorism and denied an inexpensive form of pain relief to a terminally ill cancer patient."

A police officer in full SWAT gear: "Yesterday I worked out at the gym, spoke at a high school DARE program and served a warrant on the wrong address, accidentally killing an innocent citizen, a father of five, as he lay sleeping on the couch."

A congressman: "Yesterday I had a three-martini lunch with a lobbyist, put my daughter, who was caught trying to fill a fake prescription, into a drug treatment program and upheld marijuana laws that since 1982 have resulted in more than 8 million arrests."

A well-dressed prosecutor: "Yesterday I played racquetball, took a steam bath and sent a mother of three to federal prison for 20 years because her boyfriend was a drug dealer."

A Peruvian air force pilot: "Yesterday I kissed my wife good-bye, flew patrol over a jungle and shot down a small plane, killing a missionary and her daughter."

Support the war on drugs and you support terror.

Editor, Times-Dispatch:

In his column on pain, A. Barton Hinkle argues that terminal cancer patients should be allowed to use medical marijuana if it helps relieve their symptoms. Unfortunately, a review of marijuana legislation would open up a Pandora's box most politicians would just as soon avoid. America's marijuana laws are based on culture and xenophobia, not science.

The first marijuana laws were enacted in response to Mexican migration during the early 1900s, despite opposition from the American Medical Association. White Americans did not even begin to smoke marijuana until a soon-to-be entrenched government bureaucracy began funding reefer-madness propaganda. Dire warnings that marijuana inspires homicidal rages have been counterproductive at best. An estimated 38 percent of Americans have now smoked pot. The reefer-madness myths have long been discredited, forcing the drug-war gravy train to spend millions of tax dollars on politicized research, trying to find harm in a relatively harmless plant. Meanwhile, research that might demonstrate the medical efficacy of marijuana is consistently blocked.

The direct experience of millions of Americans contradicts the sensationalistic myths used to justify marijuana prohibition. Illegal drug use is the only public health issue wherein key stakeholders are not only ignored but actively persecuted and incarcerated. In terms of medical marijuana, those stakeholders happen to be cancer and AIDS patients.

Robert Sharpe. Washington, D.C.

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Sandra McCulloch Times Colonist (Victoria) Saturday, July 06, 2002

Sandra McCulloch
Times Colonist (Victoria)
Saturday, July 06, 2002