Advocates For The Ill Ask Lawmakers to Legalize MJ
By The Associated Press
Source: Associated Press
Albany, N.Y. -- Doctors, nurses and patients urged a state Assembly hearing Wednesday to make medical use of marijuana legal for the terminally ill as an option for relieving severe nausea, spasms and pain.
''Sick patients lack interest in abusing marijuana,'' Ann Purchase of the state Nurses Association told six lawmakers during a public hearing. ''Patients want to take just enough medicine to provide relief from symptoms and side effects to lead a quality daily life.''
It was the second of two hearings on the issue organized by Manhattan Democrat Richard Gottfried, chairman of the Assembly Health Committee and sponsor of a bill that would make medical marijuana legal in New York state.
All but one of the 13 people testifying Wednesday supported the bill.
Proponents claim marijuana relieves pain, reduces nausea and revives the decreased appetite of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and suffering from other diseases such as AIDS.
''I don't believe I should have to be a criminal for doing the best I can for my health,'' said Oneonta resident Bruce Dunn, 55, who suffers from muscle spasms in his neck due to a 1988 car accident. The Army veteran, who acknowledged he began smoking marijuana in 1969 in Vietnam, said he smokes small amounts throughout the day to stop the spasms.
The hearings ''made it crystal clear this legislation is necessary ... for thousands of New Yorkers whose lives can be made better and longer by using medical marijuana,'' Gottfried said.
Whether patients should take marijuana to relieve suffering is a medical decision, not a law enforcement issue, he said. He noted that other drugs illegal for recreational use are regulated for medical purposes.
''It's true for morphine. It's true for steroids. It should be true for marijuana,'' he said.
The bill, which he first introduced in 1997, has no sponsor in the state Senate. But Gottfried hopes increased public interest in the legislation, due to the hearings and last year's gubernatorial race in which legalized marijuana became an issue, prompts the Senate to take it up.
A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno did not immediately return a request for comment.
Assemblyman Daniel Burling, a western New York Republican sitting on the hearing panel, questioned the need for legalizing smoking marijuana, when other forms of taking the drug exist.
''I don't disagree there are some benefits to marijuana,'' said Burling, a pharmacist. ''But why do we have to light something up?''
Purchase said Marinol, a synthetic version of THC found naturally in marijuana, doesn't work for all patients. She said patients can better control the dosage through smoking it, and the pill form takes longer to take effect.
But even if the state legalizes medical marijuana, the federal government still considers it illegal, Burling noted.
Gottfried said he believes the federal government would be forced to change its policy if more and more states adopt similar legislation. Eight states now allow patients to use marijuana medically.
New York made it legal in 1980, the first state nationwide to do so. But the state discontinued its program in the late 1980s, following federal approval of Marinol in June 1985. The program required patients to sign up and gain approval as if in a clinical trial, Purchase said.
''Patients don't want to go through an application period and wait and wait. They want immediate relief,'' she said.
Independence Party candidate for governor B. Thomas Golisano said last October he wanted to legalize marijuana for medicinal use, angering Marijuana Reform Party candidate Thomas Leighton. He accused the billionaire candidate of stealing his issue three weeks before the election.
Gov. George Pataki, a Republican who won a third term, said he does not support medical marijuana because patients have other, legal, options to manage pain and counter treatment side effects.
Complete Title: Advocates For The Ill Ask Lawmakers to Legalize Medical Marijuana
Source: Associated Press
Published: Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Copyright: 2003 Associated Press
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Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.
- Abraham Lincoln: Speech in the Illinois House of Representatives, Dec 18, 1840.
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