Home » About » Newsletters » February 1997
The Case for Medical Marijuana
By Toni Leeman, Legal Assistant
February 1997
Elvy Musikka has glaucoma. She has completely lost her vision in one eye from failed radical surgery and was practically blind in the other. She couldn't read, she couldn't drive, she could barely see people's shadows. Twelve years ago her doctor privately, quietly, suggested she try marijuana. Almost immediately her one eye started regaining sight. The pressure that had built up behind her eyes was relieved. She could read again. She could see her children again. So Elvy grew some marijuana in her back yard. When the police were informed they dragged her out of her house, arrested her, handcuffed her and took her off to jail, charging her with possession and cultivation of marijuana. She faced 5 years in jail or a $5,000 fine. However, this particular case has a happy ending. She fought the charge, and eventually she won the case in Broward County and the right to use marijuana for medical purposes. Thousands of people in this nation are affected by glaucoma, but only eight people in the country can legally have medicinal marijuana. Elvy Musikka is one those eight people, and to this day she retains her eyesight.
There has been a tidal wave of published research demonstrating marijuana's medical usefulness. Studies have been published in esteemed medical journals, such as The New England Journal of Medicine, documenting marijuana's effectiveness in relieving the nausea of cancer patients receiving chemotherapy treatments. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has published numerous studies which prove marijuana reduces eye pressure and staves off blindness for people with glaucoma as well as studies which show marijuana's effectiveness in reducing muscle spasms for paraplegics and victims of multiple sclerosis. Research also proves that marijuana helps AIDS patients increase their appetites, thus enabling them to maintain their weight as well as ease their nausea. Yet the thousands of people afflicted by these ailments who use marijuana to ease pain or retain eyesight are considered criminals in the eyes of the federal government. This is why coalitions are cropping up in states nationwide to make medical marijuana legal.
What is C.A.L.M.M.?
The ACLU of Florida has joined the Coalition Advocating Legislation for Medical Marijuana (C.A.L.M.M.), which has formed to lobby the Florida state legislature for medical marijuana laws in the same vein as the California and Arizona initiatives began. Although the ACLU supports the legalization of marijuana generally, there are particularly compelling reasons for its legality as a prescribable medication.
The ACLU of Florida is considering bringing a lawsuit on behalf of medical marijuana patients under Florida's constitutional right of privacy. They are looking for medical marijuana users who would be interested in challenging the state law. Your communications with this office will be subject to protection under the attorneyclient privilege. Please contact Legal Director Andy Kayton at the state office if you are interested.
The DEA's Reasoning
The medical benefits of marijuana were scrutinized, evaluated, examined and independently verified in a 16 year legal battle that supposedly ended in 1988. The results were unequivocal: the Drug Enforcement Administration's own chief law judge, Francis L. Young, proclaimed that "marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known...," and recommended that it be made available for prescription. Judge Young further admonished that "it would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance..." (Sept. 6, 1988). But top DEA bureaucrats ignored the judge's ruling and refused to reclassify marijuana from Category I, a class it shares with PCP and heroin. According to the longstanding, hardline war on drugs rhetoric, marijuana is more dangerous than cocaine and morphine.
As part of the federal government's Machiavellian stance against all drugs, it blindly and incorrectly insists that marijuana has no medical value whatsoever. This is the reason that voters in some states, such as California and Arizona, recently passed initiatives which allow doctors in those states to prescribe marijuana as medicine. The Clinton administration's swift response to these new state constitutional provisions was to threaten prosecution of doctors for even recommending marijuana. The ACLU of Northern California is now challenging these new federal restrictions on doctors' speech in that state. The ACLU has long been an advocate for the legalization of marijuana because of the strong right to privacy issue involved. (Even so, Fourth Amendment rights have been whittled away in the War on Drugs to the point where mandatory drug testing is presumed normal and random suspicionless road blocks are deemed legal.) The recent threat to hinder doctor's First Amendment rights has sparked nearly as much controversy as the medical marijuana initiatives themselves. It's been covered in every medium from newspapers, talk shows, Nightline, Crossfire and National Public Radio. Even Ann Landers is writing about this "hot issue." This has been the impetus for the formation of many statebased coalitions aiming for the decriminalization of medical marijuana.
The Outlook
Polls show that Americans overwhelmingly support medical access to marijuana. Organizations such as the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Public Health Association support medical marijuana. 44% of oncologists surveyed say they have already recommended the use of marijuana to relieve chemotherapy sideeffects.
Even Barry McCaffrey, the Policy Director of National Drug Control, has acknowledged that "there are some doctors, respected ones, who think smoked marijuana is beneficial.... We need to respect their opinions too."
It's time to respect the thousands of people who could legitimately benefit from legal access to medical marijuana as well. The medical benefits of marijuana can be ignored no longer.
Toni Leeman is legal assistant to the ACLU and founder of C.A.L.M.M. The organization's address is: P.O. Box 290054, Ft. Lauderdale, FL 333290054.
