Conservative leaders no easy targets in push for NY medical marijuana legalization Jason Rhyne

Published: Wednesday September 26, 2007





Print This Email This For conservatives, a little nuance is required For leaders of New York's Conservative Party, a group whose membership has been the target of a media blitz this month from organizations promoting a bill that would allow medical marijuana use, a firm stance against a substance that could potentially help the severely ill can be a precarious line to hold. "My aunt went through years of kidney dialysis, I was there...her nausea was terrible," said Shaun-Marie Levine, the Executive Director of the Conservative Party of New York, who doesn't deny that components in marijuana could potentially ease a patient's pain. "I don't want to see anyone suffer, but this is a terrible, terrible, terrible bill." One reason why, insists Levine, is evidence she says indicates pot is too dangerous to be used medically. A 2007 legislative memo, supplied to RAW STORY by the Conservative Party relies heavily on an editorial in the UK Independent -- "a very progressive newspaper," the memo points out -- entitled "Cannabis: An apology." The piece reverses the paper's decade-old position favoring pot legalization due to new evidence it says indicates that new, stronger versions of the drug promote the incidence of psychosis. "That study they did in England is eye-popping," said Levine. "The fact that they're citing a newspaper article, and one that isn't dealing with medical use at all, is evidence of how completely bankrupt their argument is when you look at the actual science," countered Bruce Mirken, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, one of the groups leading the push for medical use legislation in New York and elsewhere. And it's true that the Independent's piece has taken a severe beating this year from detractors who say the paper cherry picked data claiming powerful forms of marijuana on the market today pose an increased risk for mental illness. In fact, even the Independent itself piled on in a July article which stated that there was "no evidence that cannabis poses a greater threat to health today than it did 30 years ago." A July study in the British medical journal Lancet indicated that marijuana indeed posed a real increase in risk for psychosis among pot smokers, but the Marijuana Policy Project responds to that argument with a press release on its site arguing that the psychosis is so rare to begin with that a pot smoker's' increased risk is not necessarily that significant. "There are plenty of drugs we use medically that have side effects, medications that are vastly more dangerous than marijuana" said Mirken. "Shouldn't it be doctors that make that risk-benefit assessment?" But party leaders like Levine say they're not trying to make decisions for medical professionals, but are trying, rather, to ensure that whatever medicinal benefits cannabis may possess come in the form of regulated, FDA-approved drug varieties. "A lot of your pain relieving drugs are a derivative of opium," said Levine, "but we don't go around smoking opium do we? So why do we have to smoke pot?" She points to emerging drug options like Sativex, an oral medication for the relief of pain and other symptoms of multiple sclerosis, which counts components of marijuana such as THC as its active ingredients. Available in Canada, the drug isn't yet approved in the United States. "Should sick people go to jail because Sativex may be available in six years?" asked Bruce Mirken. "Sativex is to marijuana as a cup of coffee is to coffee beans." "It sounds like they're only in favor of medicines you have to pay lots of money to drug companies for," he said of the Conservative Party. "That's not a factor," insists Levine. "That's the furthest thing from our minds. The problem is that it is a mind-altering drug that would be readily available." A 'foot in the door' Mind-altering or not, a laundry list of New York medical associations have signed off on a proposed legalization bill headed for the State Senate, including the Medical Society of the State of New York, the New York State Nurses Association and the New York State Association of County Health Officials. "People have to be willing to recognize that this is a substance with real medical value for some people," insists Mirken, who says that opposition to medical marijuana is predicated not only on medical objections, but also largely on cultural divides. "It's because marijuana, maybe more than any other drug, carries a lot of cultural baggage -- like the 60's and 70's," he added. "This stuff has been around for 5,000 years and some people claim its some new invention by the drug legalizers." But Michael Long, Chairman of New York's Conservative Party, contends there are plenty of other pain-management options for patients. "I believe we have drugs, legal drugs, that doctors can turn to that help," Long said. "No one wants to see people hurting, but marijuana is not the end-all, be-all. We don't get into feel-good legislation." "And God forbid a patient taking this stuff died," he continued. "Is someone going to take [the unused marijuana] and start selling it?" The party's most serious objection to the legislation, though, is of the slippery slope variety--conservatives are fearful the push for medical use is actually just a foot in the door for full-blown decriminalization of the drug. "It's step one to moving toward legalization," Long said. "Step two is people saying 'we've lost control of it and it doesn't do any harm, why not just let people have it?" Shaun-Marie Ellis says advocates' calls for medical use, if answered, will evolve into calls for recreational use down the road. "They get their nose in the tent, they get their foot in the tent, they get half of their body in the tent, " Ellis said of what she sees as an incremental move toward general legalization. "And the next thing you know they're standing next to you in the tent." "That's the oldest story in the book," said Vincent Marrone, a spokesman for New Yorkers for Compassionate Care, a partner group with the Marijuana Policy Project, in an email to Raw Story. "Consider the facts: Cocaine and heroin...can be (and are) prescribed by physicians for medical conditions. Despite this fact, there is no movement to make them legal; there are no bills in Albany to do so...there are no individual legislators calling for it. Zip." "The reason they cling to this argument is simple," he added. "It's blind speculation, and impossible to refute." As for the future of the medical marijuana bill in the State Senate, Marrone said hopes are not as high as they once were. "There was universal expectation that the legislature would convene a special session in September or October; all those plans went out the window with 'Troopergate," he said , referring to the ongoing scandal investigation within New York Governor Elliot Spitzer's administration. "The odds of a special session are greatly reduced," he continued. "We are still working under the assumption that one can occur, but the odds seem long at the moment." "We're depending on support from principled conservatives -- less government, leave decisions to the individual, etc.," said Mirken. But pot's bad rap is a difficult one for advocacy groups to help it shake--and many just can't accept the drug as a legitimate addition to the medicine cabinet. "Grandchildren," as Michael Long explained, "don't want to see Grandma and Grandpa using marijuana around the house." (PART ONE OF THIS STORY CAN BE FOUND AT THIS LINK)



