Patients Seeking Pot Relief Blocked by Dopey Law: Dave Shiflett
July 9 (Bloomberg) — Reefer madness can still be hazardous to your health.
That’s the message of “In Pot We Trust,'’ a Showtime documentary airing tonight at 8:30 p.m. New York time. The show makes a persuasive case that marijuana provides some patients a degree of relief they can’t get from standard medications and should be legally available.
Yet many patients continue to face prosecution and even jail for smoking the palliative weed.
The show presents several compelling witnesses: a mother with severe palsy, a stockbroker with bone tumors, a churchgoing woman suffering from multiple sclerosis, and a man whose post- traumatic stress problems began when his father took the family to a restaurant and shot his mother, whose “head ended up all over me and my sister.'’
All insist marijuana relieves their pain and allows them to be productive citizens. Sadly for them, some people in high places fervently disagree.
The hero of the show is Aaron Houston, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project, a group that backs medical-marijuana legislation at the state and federal levels. While a small number of Americans participate in strictly regulated weed-providing programs, millions more risk legal sanction for using pot.
Lobbying
Houston has short hair, wears a conservative business suit and kisses his kids goodbye before heading to Capitol Hill to lobby for his cause.
Anyone wondering how lobbyists operate will benefit from watching Houston dog various congressmen, some of whom react as if they’d been approached by a representative from a child- molesting ring.
Houston is used to rejection and clearly comfortable with political combat, describing one opponent as “foaming at the mouth.'’ He also notes that his organization, in finest Washington tradition, dispenses campaign donations to “the good guys.'’
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The show gives plenty of face time to opponents, including former Health, Education and Welfare chief Joseph A. Califano, now head of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. There are also various drug czars and law enforcement officials, one of whom insists that “society can perish'’ if drugs are decriminalized.
Police Raid
Then there’s Steve Reed, a pony-tailed sheriff’s deputy in San Diego who runs the “marijuana eradication program.'’ He leads a dawn raid on a marijuana garden containing, by his count, 10,000 plants.
Reed has a missionary zeal — “this is a drug war so we’re out there to win it,'’ he says — though his concern seems to be in keeping marijuana away from young people, not ailing patients.
The documentary — written, produced and directed by Star Price — doesn’t overlook the negative effects of toking. One memorable segment, featuring pro-legalization marchers chanting “We smoke pot and we like it a lot,'’ includes an enthusiast who loses his train of thought in mid-sentence.
Such lapses, to be sure, aren’t confined to stoners. We see snippets of congressional debate over medical marijuana legislation that makes you wonder what they’re smoking on Capitol Hill. One sputtering pol rails that clerks at his grocery store have turned into dimwits from smoking marijuana, though as Houston points out such arguments have nothing to do with medical marijuana.
The show is sympathetic to the view expressed by writer Christopher Hitchens, who calls current drug policies “insane.'’ He brands the war on drugs as “the last dying smell from the Nixon administration.'’
The war certainly isn’t over. Reed brags that his raid “hurt somebody today.'’ Houston, however, has the last word: “We’re going to win eventually.'’
(Dave Shiflett is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this story: Dave Shiflett in New York at
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