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Working in Arkansas since 1999 to reduce the harm caused by drugs and by failed drug policies.

POLICIES ARE "NATIONAL, MORAL DISGRACE" -- March 7, 2001

"I've had pain since I was 14," one woman stated. Her voice cracked with emotion and she paused to brush back a strand of white hair. "I've learned to live with it, to be satisfied to be alone."

Another woman, middle-aged, attractive, described the frustration of coping with fibromyalgia, an ailment only recently acknowledged in mainstream medicine and still without effective medication. Even more upsetting to her was the fact that her daughter has it, too, and as a young adult is now fighting her way through pain clinics and other practitioners who each have their own theories and preferred therapeutic approaches, most of which are not effective.

The speakers were part of a one-day conference, "Drug War Effects on People with Disabilities," convened at the Riverfront Hilton in North Little Rock, Tuesday March 6. It seemed each of them had some story to tell, although many were present in their professional capacities to learn more about helping their clientele. Social workers, counselors, nurses, and disabled persons shared variations on the common theme: medicine that might help is not available.

The morning presentation by Dr. Donald Kreutzer focused on the hysteria surrounding "controlled" drugs.

"Patients who need narcotic pain medications," he pointed out, "may be 'dependent' on them, but only in the same way that people with diabetes are dependent on insulin."

Drug task forces, made up of U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency personnel, along with state and local law enforcement agents, often set up 'sting' operations to entrap physicians, based on their opinion of whether the doctor was over-prescribing controlled drugs. He questioned whether agents of law enforcement were the people who should be deciding whether a patient is receiving appropriate medication.
The patient is the one who suffers as a result of these policies, he said. Some patients, caught between a doctor's fear of over-prescribing and the crippling reality of constant, agonizing pain, commit suicide. Others search out illegal drugs in an effort to find some relief. For the majority, however, pain becomes the ruler of their lives, there at every dinner hour, at every step, at every conversation, in spite of the fact that so-called modern medicine has very effective medication that could relieve them of most of their pain.

He quoted from a recent article "Pain Wars: New Pain Management Standards Go Into Effect, But Will They Protect Doctors from the Drug Warriors?" (The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue 168, 1-12-2001; www.drcnet.org).

"The American Pain Society and the American Academy of Pain Management have called for dialogue with government and law enforcement officials to reach a new consensus of pain management ... Studies show that the development of addiction when opioids are used for the relief of pain is low."

Dr. Kreutzer agreed with a patient quoted in the article who argued that the "public has been misled by an unending stream of propaganda" about drugs.

"It's outrageous," Dr. Kreutzer asserted. "And it's the result of this so-called drug war."

Mary Lynn Mathre, MSN, RN, CARN, an addictions specialist at the University of Virginia Medical Center, agreed with Dr. Kreutzer.
"One of the most difficult parts of my job is to face a patient who is taking 16 pills a day, strong medications that are damaging their liver and keeping them so doped up they can barely function, and not be able to recommend to them that they might find more effective relief from marijuana. It's easier when they come to me and say they have already tried it, or that they would like to try it. Then I can talk to them about dosage, safety, and other important information they need to know."

Studies conducted by the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, completed in 1999, concurred with Nurse Mathre's opinion, she stated.

"The study examined all research that had previously been done on marijuana. In fact, it was conservative to the extent that they did not consider any anecdotal information, that is - stories people might offer about their own use or how it helped them. Even with such a narrow approach, the study concluded that marijuana was not a gateway drug, that it was not addictive, and that it did have significant medical uses. The study even went further - it said that there is no alternative to smoked marijuana for some patients."

"But here we are two years after the release of that study and the government is still refusing to allow doctors to prescribe marijuana. In fact, the federal government is still fighting laws that have passed in nine states allowing medical use."

Nurse Mathre pointed to another study completed by Dr. Jack Henningfield of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and Dr. Neal Benowitz of the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), presented in a New York Times article August 2, 1994 ("Is Nicotine Addictive? Depends on Whose Criteria You Use," by PJ Hilts, C3).

"In this research, they compared critical factors of commonly used drugs, including withdrawal, reinforcement, tolerance, dependence, and intoxication. They ranked six drugs from most serious (1) to least serious (6), including nicotine, heroin, cocaine, alcohol, caffeine, and marijuana. Marijuana ranked less serious than all other drugs including caffeine in withdrawal, tolerance, and dependence.

"Tobacco hit the top of the list for risk of dependence and our other nationally favored drug, alcohol, hit the top on intoxication. In fact, when you study the chart, you see that marijuana is the lowest risk drug in every category - except it did rank one point higher than caffeine for intoxication."

"Yet medical professionals cannot prescribe - we cannot even recommend - marijuana for medical use."

Many in attendance at the conference questioned the reasoning behind this hysteria surrounding marijuana. Al Byrne, a retired Navy officer and husband to Nurse Mathre, stated there are a multitude of shadowy reasons for the continuing prohibition on marijuana.
"The government lies," he said. "It's that simple. They tell people it will destroy their brains, or feminize the men. But they have no research that shows this to be true. We've repeatedly asked them to debate us, point for point, to examine the research, to discuss the facts. But they refuse."

"The war on drugs is a jobs program," Mr. Byrne continued. "Lots of bureaucrats are heavily invested in the drug war - law enforcement, prisons - lots of people are on the taxpayers' backs, keeping it going."

"The lawyers are in on it, too," one participant suggested. "They make the laws, and benefit every time somebody gets arrested. I read there were over 7000 arrests for marijuana possession in Arkansas last year - that's 7000 lawyer fees."
He went on to describe an incident twenty-five years ago that left him in a wheelchair.

"I have uncontrollable muscle spasms in my legs. While I was still in the hospital, going through rehab, a couple of Vietnam vets took me up on the roof and lit up a joint. It was amazing - the spasms stopped."

"A few years ago, I had been out of marijuana for nearly a year and had been asking around, trying to find some. Evidently the word got to the local sheriff. Of course, I didn't know at the time that they had a set-up going - when somebody came to me and said they could get me a pound for $500, I thought I was just incredibly lucky. A pound would last me a long time."

"A week after I bought it, they came. They tried to prove I had been selling it, but even after offering $1000 to anyone who would come forward and testify that I had sold it to them, they could not get anyone who would say it. They ended up charging me with misdemeanor possession."

"At any rate," he concluded bitterly, "it cost me a lot of money and I still didn't have the medicine I needed." His legs jerked violently while he spoke.

One speaker, suffering complete disability that resulted from a car wreck, said that current U. S. policies are a "national moral disgrace."

"We hurt people in new ways, on top of the ways they are already hurting," she said. "And the b-s- dished out by the government on this is just that - they say more research is needed. Well how much research does somebody need? If it helps me feel better, that should be enough. Marijuana never killed anybody. And who's going to do the million dollar studies to get marijuana approved by the FDA? Pharmaceutical corporations are in it for the money. They can't make any money off marijuana. People can grow their own!"

Nurse Mathre said that medical professionals who know the benefits of marijuana are often afraid to speak up. Instead, she urged those attending the conference to work through their professional organizations.

"Our organization, Patients Out of Time, has compiled a list of over 100 organizations who oppose criminal sanctions for the personal medical use of marijuana," she stated. She paused to read a few names from the list.
"Episcopal Church of the U.S., American Public Health Association, American Society of Addiction Medicine, Multiple Sclerosis California Action Network, National Association for Public Health Policy... Perhaps there are organizations in Arkansas that would be willing to endorse the patient's right to use marijuana as medicine, even if individual practitioners would not."

Delbert Lewis, an activist in spite of his confinement to a wheelchair after a childhood bout with polio, reminded the group that people with disabilities are often seen as "those people." Like many disenfranchised groups such as African Americans before the Civil War and the civil rights movement and women before the vote and the women's liberation movement, persons with disabilities are often dismissed as "those people" when the subject of improved access or effective pain relief are aired in public policy discussion.

"But how many of "those people" do we have to have before we recognize that we are all "one people" and whatever infringes on the rights of some of us in fact infringes on the rights of us all?"

The conference was sponsored by the Drug Policy Education Group, Inc., a non-profit organization working in Arkansas to address the harm caused by the war on drugs, and made possible by a generous grant from the Drug Policy Foundation. For a copy of the list of organizations endorsing a patient's right to use medical marijuana, contact Patients Out of Time at (804) 263-4484 or visit their website at www.medicalcannabis.com 

For more information about the Drug Policy Education Group, call 479-839-2475 or visit their website at www.dpeg.org or contact Denele Campbell, 479-839-2475.