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Marijuana As Medicine? Advocates hail legislature's legalization of pot for medical use
By John Burton
RED BANK - Jim Miller has long advocated for the medical use of marijuana, to help when his late wife had suffered the debilitating effects of multiple sclerosis. Miller, who along with some others appearing at the Red Bank Public Library on Jan. 13, expressed a sense of victory and gratitude that the state Legislature just that week finally agreed with them and approved a bill that will make it available for the ill.
"It's a new world here in New Jersey," Miller told the gathering of about 25 people two weeks ago about the recent developments on this front. "There's a lot to be done. If you want to help that's great."
Joining Miller were Eric Hafner and Evan Nison, two members of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy and the New Jersey Chapter of the National Organization for the Repeal of Marijuana Laws, which goes by the acronym NORML, two organizations that have been supporting not only the use of pot for the serious ill, but for the general public, under regulated circumstances. Along with Hafner and Nison, on hand were Rick Cusick, associate publisher for High Times Magazine, which has long advocated for pot's legalization, and Charles Kwiatkowski, a Hazlet man who told of using pot daily to alleviate some of the long term consequences of his multiple sclerosis and the five herniated spinal discs, he said he suffered as a result from his long hours as a computer programmer, hunched over his keyboard.
"They need to see it as a true medicine," Kwiatkowski insisted. "I also see it as a natural resource."
With his back injury and MS, Kwiatkowski said his doctor had prescribed OxyContin, a strong morphine-like pain medication. But long-term use of it can affect a man's virility and Kwiatkowski and his wife had hopes of starting a family. He turned to pot. Not just smoking it, he said, but using it as an analgesic balm and ingesting it in foods.
Kwiatkowski is woken up each night with after only four hours of sleep because of the pain, he said.
"I need medical marijuana to get out of bed," he said.
Miller, Toms River, said he has been waging this battle for 18 years, as he and his wife, Cheryl, tried to get lawmakers to listen. "The worse she got," Miller said of his wife and her illness, "the stronger she got as an advocate."
The Millers actually got themselves arrested at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., by lighting marijuana joints to make their point.
Miller acknowledges he is a regular user, for non-medicinal purposes - he doesn't like to use the term "recreational use." And like the others on hand, especially Cusick, supports the general legalization of it.
"It's time to open for them to open the door to full legalization," Kwiatkowski said. "I know it's safer than alcohol."
Cusick said he and his magazine espouse, "The right to smoke marijuana of its own accord...No apologies."
"And it should not be the business of the United States government should they choose to do that," he insisted.
"This is a medical and civil rights issue," Hafner added. "Locking up people for taking their medicine. That's not what a free nation does."
"This bill is definitely a step in the right direction," he said.
Pot use for medicinal needs has been recognized in other states, most notably California, and the debate as to whether it has any more detrimental effects than alcohol and tobacco will certainly continue, even as outgoing Gov. Jon Corzine signed the bill into law on Jan. 19. This law will eventually allow patients, with the proper prescription from a medical professional, to get up to two ounces from what will be labeled "alternative treatment centers."
While it is now law there continues to be opposition, though no one from any of the groups opposing it were on hand at the Jan. 13 program. Mary Pat Angelini, director of Prevention First, Ocean, which provides substance abuse counseling and resources, and a member of the state Assembly (R-11), agrees this law could be, "the camel's nose under the tent," toward legalization, which she opposes.
"I think we're giving the perception to our children marijuana is OK, that it's not a big deal," she said. "And I think that's very concerning to me as a parent, a grandparent and prevention specialist."
There have been causes of concern with how this is playing out in California, said Angelini, as well as Martin Lynch, an investigator for the Union County Prosecutor's Office, who is also the president of the New Jersey Narcotics Enforcement Officers Association, which lobbied against the bill's passage.
It has been presented as a compassion issue, allowing seriously or terminally ill patients something that may provide some relief. But, the opponents argued, the effectiveness of it has yet to be determined, to say nothing of smoking it as a delivery system.
In California, an estimated 350,000 patients have received prescriptions, which have to be paid for and, "money and drugs is a recipe for disaster," Lynch said.
In California, Angelini said, "There is one story after another of neighborhoods being ruined by these shops," providing the pot.
Currently there are established more effective drugs, the opponents said.
"This new bill passing will allow me to take less ibuprofen," and escape that drug's side effects, Kwiatkowski told the audience at the library.
The library board, which permitted the presentation and its showing of the documentary The Union: The Business Behind Getting High, is not taking a position on the debate one way or the other, stressed the library's director, Deborah Griffin-Sadel.
