MEDICAL GANJA GATHERING

Iowa University Hosts Potent Med-Pot Conference

The state of Iowa, in America's Midwest, seems an unlikely place for
progressive marijuana politics.

But in early April, I was on a plane bound for Iowa City to attend the
"First National Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics," looking down at
patchworks of industrial agriculture where there used to be tallgrass
prairie, ditchhemp, and Indians. It snowed the day I arrived; somebody drew
a cannabis leaf in the white powder.

Medical marijuana is fast becoming an accepted industrial fact. This
three-day event, televised to universities in American and Canada, and held
with the blessing of the University of Iowa at the institution's conference
center, emphatically emphasized that scientists and government officials
around the world, even in prohibitionist America, recognize the plant's
amazingly diverse healing potentials.

As courageous California doctor Tod Mikuriya reported during the
conference, cannabis treats hundreds of medical conditions, from Attention
Deficit Disorder to impotence, from anxiety to arthritis.

Mikuriya has been recommending cannabis to patients for 25 years, and has
been targeted by the federal drug czar, California's attorney general, and
the state's medical board because of it.

Despite the threat of persecution that haunts professionals who seek honest
discussion of medical pot, conference organizers Mary Lynn Mathre, RN, and
her husband Al Byrne, a retired navy lieutenant commander, teamed with the
head of the University of Iowa's School of Nursing, Dr Melanie Dreher, to
put on a well-run, entertaining seminar featuring the latest information
and debate about medical pot.

Questioning The IOM

The conference brought people who run cannabis distribution centers for
medical patients into contact with urbane scientists who've never (yet)
puffed a phattie. It also facilitated dialogue between med-pot advocates
and a high-ranking representative of the lnstitute of Medicine, Dr Janet
Joy, a University of Toronto-educated neuroscientist who was feisty, fun
and fair-minded.

Everyone found it significant that the IOM med-pot report (released in
1999), which most had assumed would support drug czar Barry McCaffrey,
instead affirmed marijuana's unique medical efficacy and called for
clinical trials.

Mathre and Joy agreed that the IOM study debunked the gateway myth and
found that even smoked marijuana (with all its alleged negative respiratory
effects) is useful in some medical situations.

"We think our study was scientific and objective," Joy quipped, "because
everybody on all sides of the debate said our report backed up their position!"

But many conference attendees criticized the report.

Dr Juan Sanchez-Ramos, a highly-regarded professor of neurology,
pharmacology and psychiatry at the University of South Florida, who like
Mikuriya has been persecuted because of his position on med-pot, said that
Joy had asked him to contribute to the report's section on movement
disorders, but did not follow up on it, which disappointed him because he
knew of a lot of unique research that he was eager to share with the IOM.

Joy told Sanchez-Ramos that the report process became complicated and
rushed as it neared completion, and that her failure to get back to the
doctor was due to deadline stress, nothing more.

Other critics said the IOM failed to consider holistic, non-Western
approaches to plant-based medicines, and had ignored non-smoked delivery
systems, such as vaporizers and marijuana food, when evaluating harm potential.

"The IOM report is totally flawed," said Larry Hirsch, the pioneering
Philadelphia attorney who last year used a class action lawsuit in an
attempt to force the federal government to rescind prohibition and open the
IND program to new patients.

"It minimized patients' experiences, and leaves out a plethora of information."

I sat near Joy during some of her dialogues with critics. She referred to
some complaints as "bullshit," but acknowledged that the IOM's findings may
have been influenced by the report design "negation process" between IOM
and McCaffrey's Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"There are always thing you look back on and wish you could have had more
time for," Joy said. "We have a new book coming out this summer to explain
the significance of this report for patients and medical professionals."

Rediscovering The Herb

People like "Darth" McCaffrey and other meanies deny that marijuana has
medical usefulness, but the conference featured many respected academics
and medical professionals who provided bales of evidence that marijuana is
medically effective and relatively safe. Medical doctors such as Ethan
Russo, Donald Tashkin, Denis Petro, Mikuriya, Sanchez-Ramos, and Rik Musty
discussed specialized studies and findings about marijuana's effects on
psychology and physiological functions.

Specialists such as David Pate, who represents the Dutch breeding company
HortaParm, and John McPartland, an osteopath and botanical expert who just
completed a new book on cannabis pests and diseases, joined with GW
Pharmaceuticals' representative David Hadorn to explain how plant
cannabinoids are developed and tested for medical use.

These presentations were augmented by "anecdotal" reports from Musikka,
Randall, IND patients Irvin Rosenfeld and George McMahon, and Mae Nutt, a
mom who saw cannabis help her two sons when they were dying of cancer.

The consensus opinion is that marijuana is already verifiably helpful in
combating chronic pain, muscle spasticity, seizure disorders, glaucoma,
naussea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy, anorexia, and symptoms
resulting from HIV/AIDS. Researchers believe marijuana may be useful for
other conditions, but caution that it may also cause unwanted respiratory,
psychological and cognitive effects.

Mathre noted that respected medical associations, such as the Virginia
Nurses Association, American Public Health Association, National Nurses'
Society on Addictions, and many European organizations have endorsed
immediate availability or study of medical cannabis.

Michael Aldrich, a countercultural hero who, along with his vivacious wife
Michelle, administers the world's largest collection of
psychedelics-related archives (located in San Francisco), told the 200
conference attendees that marijuana's medical usefulness was recognized by
Asian scholars thousands of years ago.

"I think that the IOM and the drug warriors should respect the historical
record," Aldrich told me. "Marijuana-based pharmaceuticals were used
throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas as recently as the last century.
There is this myth that better drugs came along and made marijuana
obsolete. Science is rediscovering, as we are hearing at this conference,
that plant-based medicines can be safer and more effective than drugs
produced by for-profit corporations."

Med-Pot Politics

While most of the conference presenters reported on scientific and medical
realities, some presenters chronicled other challenges.

Scott Imler, the controversial founder of the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource
Cooperative, told the audience about distributing medical herb to hundreds
of patients in Southern California. Imler began the cooperative three years
ago, and has assisted a total of 1600 patients, 780 of whom are current
active members. AIDS patients make up 75% of his patient list; other
patient problems include chronic pain, MS, paralysis, glaucoma and epilepsy.

Imler told me he has been the victim of attempted robbery, threatened by
rivals in the marijuana industry, and accused of being "a nark" because he
rigorously checks medical credentials and recommendations, and tries to
maintain honorable relationships with government officials.

"My only goal is to help these patients," Imler said. "It's hard just
getting enough medicine for them. We grow a third of it at our club, and
patients grow it and bring in their surplus, but we of it at the club, and
patients grow it and bring in their surplus, but we are still forced to buy
a third of our supply from the black market. We gave away 47 pounds last
year to indigent patients."

Kevin Zeese, a Washington, DC-based attorney active in marijuana politics
for three decades and former chief counsel and executive director of NORML,
told the conference that attempts to get courts and other branches of
government to legitimize medical marijuana have so far not been handled in
a uniformly just or expedient manner.

"Voters have made it clear they favor medical marijuana, but things haven't
changed enough for patients," said Zeese, who now presides over Common
Sense for Drug Policy and is active with Alliance of Reform Organizations.
"What we need to do is educate lawmakers, bureaucrats and the public, and
work together to make the marijuana movement a cohesive coalition that
networks with allied groups, such as civil rights and environmental activists."

Prescription For Success

The Iowa conference drew people from Europe, North America and Asia, and
received favorable press coverage from many local and national media
outlets, including the New York Times. I enjoyed talking to representatives
of the Japan Medical Marijuana Association, who noted that marijuana was
used industrially and medically in Japan until the US imposed prohibition
on the country after World War Two.

Dr. Dreher, who has conducted revelatory ganja research in Jamaica, credit
Mathre and Byrne for the conference's success. The two are former NORML
boardmembers who run a med-pot advocacy organization called Patients Out of
Time.

"A lot of doctors and nurses know this is good medicine, but they are
afraid to put patients first by joining with us," said Mathre, who is the
editor of a quality med-pot science book, titled "Cannabis in Medical
Practice."

Some people have already gotten the message. When I visited Hemp Cat, a hip
headshop located near the University, customers and store managers told me
Cannabis Culture is very popular with students, as is medical marijuana.

"I use it as medicine too," a female student told me. "It helps with
periods, and with life among the corn husks."

Note: Related and cited websites:

Patients Out of Time:
http://www.medicalcannabis.com/

Dr. Tod Mikuriya:
http://www.mikuriya.com/althealth/
http://www.drugsense.org/CCUA/

MPP's compilation of the best excerpts from the Institute of Medicine's
medicinal marijuana report is at:
http://www.mpp.org/science.html
The entire report is at:
http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/marimed/

Dr. David Hadorn:
http://www.medicinal-cannabis.org/

George McMahon:
http://www.trvnet.net/~mmcmahon/

Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics
http://www.marijuana-as-medicine.org/

Common Sense for Drug Policy:
http://www.csdp.org/

An outstanding collection of photos from the conference:
http://www.immly.org/immly_at_the_ncct_conference.htm