Cannabis News Students for Sensible Drug Policy
  Kind Bud
Posted by FoM on June 26, 2001 at 15:21:54 PT
By Christopher Largen 
Source: Village Voice  

medical George McMahon knows he hasn't got much time to live. On this spring day, he sits in his car beside a crowded beach and opens a shiny metal canister filled with marijuana cigarettes. McMahon casually presses a large joint between his wrinkled lips, then lights it.

He's not in Amsterdam or Greenwich Village, but in rural Texas, home to Bible thumpers, Bush whackers, and a prison system renowned for zero-tolerance sentences and assembly-line executions. Even so, he's not concerned about legal repercussions. He can smoke pot in any state of the union without being arrested or prosecuted.

Afflicted with a rare neurological disease, George McMahon, age 50, is the fifth United States citizen to receive legal medical marijuana from our federal government. He gets 300 joints a month, courtesy of the little-known Compassionate Investigational New Drug Program, run since 1978 by the Food and Drug Administration.

The U.S. has a long history of allowing the use of experimental pharmaceuticals, whether an unproven root bought in a health food store or the once-shunned thalidomide recently given to blood cancer patients like Geraldine Ferraro. But progress toward legitimizing the palliative power of pot stopped cold last month, when the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that "marijuana has no medical benefits worthy of an exception" from the Controlled Substances Act. In their ruling, the justices made no mention of Uncle Sam's own pot farm at the University of Mississippi, nor of the machine-rolled joints sent free of charge to sick people like George.

For now, the program continues because, officially at least, it's considered a research project. In theory, the feds are supposed to be collecting data on the therapeutic effectiveness of marijuana, but George says the agencies supplying him have never sought much information on that. "I am just so pleased to be able to use what they send me legally," McMahon says. "To be relieved of some of the pain and still be within the law means so much."

The FDA's "compassionate" approach hasn't been available to many. The agency implemented the program under Jimmy Carter, following a lawsuit by Robert Randall, a glaucoma patient who demanded that the government acknowledge the medical necessity of his marijuana use. He was soon joined by cancer patients and people with multiple sclerosis or spinal cord injuries, who smoked federal pot for relief from nausea, pain, and muscle spasms.

But as the AIDS epidemic swelled, so did the number of applicants. Overwhelmed officials in the Bush administration stopped accepting applications in 1992, throwing hundreds of requests in the garbage and forcing the chronically or terminally ill to break the law by seeking their medicine on the black market.

The government agreed, however, to continue supplying the 34 patients, like George, who had already been accepted. Today, only a half-dozen remain.

His pain momentarily quieted, George steps onto the green grass and limps toward the rickety wooden dock that reaches into glistening water. He suffers from an obscure disease known as Nail Patella Syndrome, a poorly understood genetic condition. NPS can attack major organs, including the kidney and liver, disrupt the immune system in ways that are difficult to comprehend, and cause bones to be deformed, become brittle, and easily break. It affects the joints, limits mobility, and causes chronic pain, muscle cramps, and spasms. Some NPS patients also have serious immune system complications from the disease, which is incurable.

George winces slightly as a cool breeze carries a cloud of marijuana smoke toward the lake. Although he's well-acquainted with pain, he lived without a concrete diagnosis for many years. As a child, George contracted colds and the flu frequently. Muscles in his arms didn't develop normally, and lifting weights did not help. He was constantly breaking bones, especially in his hands and wrists, and he lost all of his teeth by the time he was 21. He felt exhausted and could stand for only a few minutes without experiencing unbearable pain. Spells of nausea, fever, chills, and night sweats were common for him. He suffered from hepatitis A and B and tuberculosis, and there were times when his pain was just constant—whether he was walking, lying down, or sitting up.

The herb has brought McMahon the relief he couldn't find in traditional pills, and with fewer side effects. "Most people don't know that I'm sick unless I tell them," he says. "The marijuana has really been that effective in controlling my symptoms. I don't need statistics and research. I am living proof that marijuana works as medicine."

Efforts to get data gathered in the "investigational" pot project proved fruitless. Various FDA representatives promised to answer questions and look up reports, but none did.

Paul Armentano, spokesperson for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, says that's not unusual. "If you ask the officials involved in the program to see the research they've collected over the last 20 years, they'll claim they don't have any," says Armentano. "They'll claim that they're keeping these people in the program out of compassion."

For people like McMahon, the true goal—to relieve suffering—seems obvious, as does the need to grant the relief to all who need it. His own medical history includes 19 major surgeries, seven of them performed in one week. Throughout his life, he has been prescribed morphine, Demerol, Codeine, Valium, and other sedating medications. He has been rushed to hospital emergency rooms on at least six occasions with severe drug-induced conditions, including respiratory and renal failure and hallucinations. The medications did little for his chronic pain and spasms, and he was both mentally and physically incapacitated.

Convinced that using small amounts of pot daily helped ease his discomfort better and without life-threatening side effects, McMahon smoked marijuana illegally for 20 years. Finally, he found a doctor in Iowa, where he lived at the time, who took a special interest in helping him get marijuana legally. He put McMahon through an investigation protocol and a spastic pain evaluation. Then McMahon contacted the people in Iowa senator Charles Grassley's office, and was pleased at their willingness to help.

After yet more tests and stacks of legal paperwork, George received his first shipment of marijuana from the National Institute on Drug Abuse in March 1990. These days, he goes to a designated pharmacy, where he picks up the medicine in the form of joints, stored in a silver tin with a prescription tag.

McMahon keeps his monthly supply with him at all times. As a general rule, he tries to be discreet, in hopes of not offending people or appearing to kids as a recreational pothead. "I cope with the pain," he says. "Some days are better than others, but if I go more than a few hours without my medicine, I can get myself in trouble."

Sometimes, though, he lands in a jam by taking it. McMahon says few cops seem to be aware of the program. On one occasion George and Margaret, his wife of 30 years, were attending a Virginia conference sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, where he intended to contradict the agency's specious claim that marijuana was addictive. George had meandered away from the main crowd to smoke his medicine, when he was approached by two police officers, one of whom began hitting his fingers, trying to knock the joint out of his hand, yelling at him to put it out.

"He called me a motherfucker, called my wife a fucking bitch, and told me to shut my fucking mouth," he says. "They tried to get us to leave by intimidating us. They treated me like a criminal. I am not a criminal. It was one of the worst feelings I've ever had."

Despite the intensity of his daily struggles, McMahon describes himself as a "regular family man who has had to make wide adjustments." His voice and appearance are rugged, the heavy toll of years spent at manual labor, for mining companies and large farming operations. Today, he lives quietly on disability insurance at his modest home in an East Texas gated community, and enjoys spending time with his three adult children and seven grandchildren.

He has a certificate of heroism for participating in the President's Drug Awareness Program in 1990, signed by former first lady and prohibition advocate Nancy Reagan. McMahon is a reluctant hero, and he expresses gratitude to his family, particularly his wife, who has seen the difference cannabis makes. "If he did not receive the marijuana," Margaret says, "George would probably be dead by now from all the other narcotics he would be taking for pain."

In addition to struggling for survival, McMahon is fighting for the decriminalization of medical marijuana. Since government weed contains only a moderate level of the intoxicant THC, McMahon remains lucid and eloquent. He has traveled the country, speaking with university students and faculty, legislators, physicians, and law enforcement officials—all while smoking 10 joints a day.

The recent Supreme Court decision to ban the Oakland (California) Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative from distributing medical pot set the campaign back, even as it exposed the government's hypocrisy. According to legal documents, the compassionate program that helps George McMahon was a cornerstone of the cooperative's cause.

NORML's Armentano says the ruling shows the limits of a state-by-state approach toward legalizing marijuana. "The Supreme Court's decision shows that there are no shortcuts in the game, so efforts should be directed toward Congress," he says. "While the decision is unexpected, it is definitely no shock."

Few expect the federal government to start zealously enforcing the law. Consider the ramifications if officials began arresting and incarcerating tens of thousands of patients, breaking apart the families of sick and dying people, and using our tax dollars to prosecute, imprison, and provide medical services to these patients. Politicians want to avoid front-page photos of MS patients with spasmodic arms handcuffed to wheelchairs while relatives sob in the background.

Recent polls indicate 70 to 80 percent of the public approves of medical marijuana being used by the general population. Yet when decriminalization advocates push for reform, the government counters that there simply isn't enough research to warrant the reclassification of a potentially dangerous drug. This call for evidence operates in a circular fashion, as the drug laws themselves have prevented the accumulation of much data. Legitimate scientists who seek to perform controlled studies on cannabis face a daunting bureaucratic gauntlet. Additionally, officials have repeatedly ignored the findings of their own commissioned research panels, which argue that marijuana is a relatively safe substance and has medical applications.

Meanwhile, as attorneys and pharmaceutical executives play politics and debate where to draw the line, sick and dying people like George McMahon continue to be arrested.

George extinguishes his government roach as a blazing sun descends behind him on the lake. It seems unreasonable to him that our nation locks patients in prison, strips them of their voting rights, confiscates their property, and destroys their families, all because it seeks to eradicate a natural herb that has no fatal side effects, was used medically for thousands of years, and is less harmful and addictive than tobacco or alcohol. "I want people to know that I am just a normal guy," he says. "I'm not an activist, but I do believe that every sick patient in America should be able to make these personal choices without going to jail."

The writer is George McMahon's longtime friend and a fellow advocate for medical marijuana. The two plan to put a portion of the proceeds from this article toward promoting the cause through Patients Out of Time -- http://www.medicalcannabis.com/ -- an organization McMahon helped found.

Note: Uncle Sam's Medical Pot Project Is Light on Research, Heavy on Compassion.

Additional reporting: Taron Flood

Source: Village Voice (NY)
Author: Christopher Largen
Published: Week of June 27 - July 3, 2001
Copyright: 2001 VV Publishing Corporation
Contact: editor@villagevoice.com
Website: http://www.villagevoice.com/

Related Articles & Web Sites:

NORML
http://www.norml.org/

George McMahon's Home Page
http://www.trvnet.net/~mmcmahon/

Medicinal Cannabis Research Links
http://freedomtoexhale.com/research.htm

Conference Aim To Explore Use of Marijuana
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9300.shtml

Advocates of Marijuana's Medicinal Use Get Hearing
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9292.shtml


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Comment #5 posted by Stacy Jane on July 22, 2001 at 17:55:26 PT:

Bud
Smokin bud is awesome...everybody should do it

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #4 posted by devon on July 02, 2001 at 14:34:21 PT:

pot!!! natural healer!
pot is a better drug than man made drugs! i think it
should be leagle. two thumbs up for pot! :)


[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #3 posted by brian laing on June 27, 2001 at 19:48:21 PT:

luckiest man alive
geeeze what other medical conditions allow this as treatment (are any contagis) i know of old people who have bad arthritis get about 30 joints a month but 300!!!! lucky is the word


[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #2 posted by dddd on June 27, 2001 at 01:12:41 PT
??????????
...when you think of it,,it does go beyond the unbelievable to
consider that the government supplies marijuana to these
people,,and at the same time,somehow maintains that there
is no medical use for Marijuana??If there is no medical use
for Marijuana,,,then how is it that they still supply MJ to these
people????,,,if it's not medical,then it must be for purposes of
getting stoned,,.......

Would there not be some legal challenge availiable on these grounds?,,
,,I mean talk about hypocritical,,,,the fact that they allow these people
to use Marijuana in itself,would seem to me to set some sort of legal
precedant,(sp?), upon which a crafty lawyer could make a case.

dddd

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #1 posted by ekim on June 26, 2001 at 20:35:54 PT:

Woody would be great for the part
Where is Robert Redford why are there no movies of these lonely six. Just think of the money that would be made from a movie that showed people getting Gov't. grown cannabis. With the plot being that no research was being done so the Supreme Court could lie about it's value. Where is Bill Gates, just a one week paycheck would cover the cost of a movie. I bet most would work below scale.

[ Post Comment ]

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