Protect Patients From Politics

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http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/21742/

 

Protect Patients From Politics

 

By Montel Williams, AlterNet. Posted April 12, 2005.

 

 

In 40 states, I am a criminal. My crime? Using the medicine that has

allowed me to lead a normal life, despite multiple sclerosis: medical

marijuana.

 

You may know me as a television talk-show host, but here in 40 states,

I am also a criminal. My crime? Using the medicine that has allowed me

to lead a normal life, despite having multiple sclerosis: medical

marijuana.

 

Being diagnosed with MS in 1999 felt like a death sentence. I doubted

my ability to function as a father, son, brother, friend, talk-show

host and producer. I honestly couldn't see a future. I had always

taken excellent care of my body; I'd worked out, followed a healthy

diet and looked the picture of health. What no one could see was the

mind-numbing pain that seared through my legs, as if I were being

stabbed with hot pokers.

 

My doctors wrote me prescriptions for some of the strongest

painkillers available. I took Percocet, Vicodin and Oxycontin on a

regular basis, two at a time, every three or four hours. I was

knowingly risking overdose just trying to make the pain bearable. In

my desperation, I even tried morphine. Yet these powerful, expensive

drugs brought no relief.

 

I couldn't sleep. I was agitated; my legs kicked involuntarily in bed,

and the pain was so bad I found myself crying in the middle of the

night. And all these heavy-duty narcotics made me nearly incoherent; I

couldn't take them when I had to work because they turned me into a

zombie. Worse, these drugs are all highly addictive. I did not want to

become a junkie, wasted and out of control. I spiraled deeper into a

black hole of depression.

 

In Climbing Higher, my book on living with MS, I write in detail about

the severe mental and physical pain that I experienced. It was so bad

that I twice attempted suicide.

 

Finally, someone suggested that I try smoking a little marijuana

before going to bed, saying that it might help me fall asleep.

Skeptical but desperate, I tried it. Three puffs and within minutes

the excruciating pain in my legs subsided. I had my first restful

sleep in months. The effect was miraculous.

 

But the federal government classifies marijuana in the same category

as LSD, PCP and heroin -- considered unsafe to use even under medical

supervision. Physicians are allowed to prescribe cocaine, morphine and

methamphetamine, but not marijuana.

 

Ninety-nine percent of marijuana arrests are made by local police,

under state law -- but the states can decide not to arrest

medical-marijuana patients. Ten states now protect medical-marijuana

patients from arrest, the latest being Montana, whose

medical-marijuana law passed in November with 62 percent of the vote.

Yet I'm still a criminal.

 

Medical and public-health organizations agree that medical marijuana

can be beneficial. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the

National Academy of Sciences, released a study commissioned by the

White House that had found marijuana effective in combating pain,

nausea and other symptoms afflicting patients with MS, cancer and

other illnesses. The American Public Health Association's policy

statement summarizes the extensive research showing marijuana's

effectiveness, and adds: " Marijuana has an extremely wide acute margin

of safety for use under medical supervision. ... Greater harm is

caused by the consequences of its prohibition than possible risks of

medicinal use. "

 

Patients struggling for their lives against such illnesses as MS,

cancer and AIDS should not be treated as criminals. We need to get

beyond politics. We need more research into marijuana's medicinal

effects, and we should heed the research already available. The

federal government should change marijuana's classification so that

physicians can prescribe it.

 

But while we wait for the federal government to act -- which, sadly,

may take some time -- the states should take action to protect patients.

 

Because of medical marijuana, I am still alive -- and leading a far

more fruitful life than before. I am not alone. There are thousands of

patients like me, and we should not be treated as criminals.

 

Montel Williams is a television talk-show host and producer. This

column originally appeared in the Providence Journal.