April 8, 1993

Medical Marijuana Pain Sufferers Who Smoke for Relief Want to End Stigma of Breaking Law

Pamela Ferdinand, Herald Staff Writer

Chris Woiderski, a Tampa psychology student paralyzed from the chest down, used to take 490 prescribed pills a month to stop his muscle spasms and kill pain. He says he lived in a pharmacological stupor.

Irvin Rosenfeld, a Lauderhill stockbroker whose body is riddled with hundreds of bone tumors, underwent eight operations but could not prevent constant pulled muscles and hemorrhages. Heaven would be lying on a rack to stretch his tight muscles, he says.

Bound by their pain, both men sought relief in marijuana and found it. The difference is, one of them is breaking the law.

Woiderski, and others like him, say they have no choice but to defy a law they deem both irrational and cruel. Using their own lives as examples of marijuana's medical value and pinning fresh hopes on a new political climate, they are part of a movement putting medical marijuana back on the nation's agenda.

More people in Florida than anywhere else in the United States use marijuana legally for medical reasons. And more Floridians were approved for and awaiting their legal marijuana supplies when the Bush administration banned new users in 1991.

"Every time I buy it in the street, I don't know what it's going to be mixed with," says Ronald Shaw, a Cocoa engineer who suffers post-polio muscle spasms. Shaw was approved for the 14- year-old program, but never received any legal marijuana. "The government is making me a criminal. I don't want to be a

criminal."

Times are changing, though, and many illegal medical marijuana users believe they may not be considered criminals for long. They're counting on Surgeon General-designate Joycelyn Elders, whose office at the Arkansas Department of Health has been flooded with pro-marijuana letters.

She supports its medical use, although aides say she may be reluctant to speak out immediately. More pressing are other, less controversial health issues, they say. "Her belief is that if there is some medical benefit to the patient and the doctor feels it's in the best interest of his patient, the doctor should have (marijuana) as a tool," said Carol Roddy, Elder's executive assistant. "It's just not her battle."

Medical marijuana users are also heartened by high-profile backers. The American Medical Student Association, which represents 48,000 pre-med students and residents, endorsed marijuana's medical use at its Miami conference last month. Marijuana relieves symptoms of AIDS, cancer, glaucoma and neurological disorders, the association contends.

Recommendations issued in January by Gov. Lawton Chiles' Red Ribbon Panel on AIDS also encouraged its medical use. People with AIDS -- there are more than 26,440 in Florida -- say marijuana reduces nausea, a side effect of chemotherapy, and stimulates appetite. In other words, marijuana gives AIDS patients a classic case of the "munchies."

The debate even hit the annals of pop culture when Garry Trudeau devoted his Doonesbury cartoon strip to it in February.

"You really bake marijuana brownies for AIDS patients, Cornell?" Trudeau's Zonker asks his friend, a new character. "But isn't it illegal?"

"Of course it's illegal," says Cornell. "But NOT to help suffering people would be immoral. Sometimes you have to answer to a higher law!"

Federal drug agencies prohibit marijuana's medical use. Among their reasons: Smoking may cause lung cancer. Marijuana may damage brain cells and compromise the immune and reproductive systems. "Highs" may lead to anxiety, panic and dizziness.

The Drug Enforcement Administration says "claims that marijuana is medicine are false, dangerous and cruel" and refuses to classify it as a Schedule II drug, such as morphine and codeine, which may be prescribed by doctors. Heroin and marijuana are among Schedule I drugs that cannot be prescribed.

"There are other medicines that are just as good with less- damaging side effects," said Wayne Roques, the Miami-based DEA demand-reduction coordinator. "Marijuana gives false hope to people that it is the solution to their problems."

Rosenfeld disagrees.

Each week, the Lauderhill stockbroker leaves his office several times a day for the confines of a Honda Civic. He places a beige towel over his gray suit pants and lights a marijuana joint, slowly filling the car with its heavy, sweet odor.

"This is not a cure-all," he says, popping a mint into his mouth when the cigarette is exhausted. "It's for someone who has nowhere else to go."

At 10, he was diagnosed with multiple congenital cartilaginous exostosis and pseudo-pseudo hypoparathyroidism -- bone tumors that consume most of his body.

Standard therapies and drugs such as Demerol failed to halt the tumors' growth or deaden his pain, he says. Then Rosenfeld tried marijuana.

"I was playing a game of chess and I stood up," he recalled. "It dawned on me that I had been sitting for one hour. Before, I couldn't sit for more than 15 minutes."

Others share similar recollections.

"I took only two or three puffs before my belly untwisted," said Kenneth Jenks, a 31-year-old Panama City Beach hemophiliac who contracted the AIDS virus from a tainted transfusion. "Forty minutes later, I raided the kitchen, gobbling down food."

Woiderski, 30, says, "I can shower without my legs kicking out from under me. And by the time I get out of the shower, I can go to school, the buzz will be gone and the spasms will be gone for about six hours."

Rosenfeld and Jenks, the only AIDS patient in the United States to receive legal marijuana, consider themselves lucky. They are among 10 people left in the country -- half of whom live in Florida -- entitled to receive free marijuana under the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program, administered by the Public Health Service.

Participants regularly receive a canister of 300 cigarettes labeled "Use as Directed" from a federal marijuana farm in Mississippi. Rosenfeld stores it with refrigerated lettuce to keep it fresh. Other legal users, such as glaucoma patient Elvy Musikka, 53, of Hollywood, steam the freeze-dried leaves and bake them in brownies and cookies.

Dr. James Mason, head of the Public Health Service, banned new medical marijuana users in 1991, citing a "surge in new applications" and alternative therapies. At least 20 people who had been approved were cut off.

Most of those people live in Florida, according to the Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. Public Health Service officials declined to release exact figures or names.

As an alternative, the government suggested Marinol, a synthetic form of the active ingredient in marijuana, THC. But Shaw, who suffers symptoms from a childhood bout with polio, says he had difficulty controlling the dosage and suffered severe chest pains. He went through a $55 supply of 25 capsules in two days.

Now he relies on friends to buy marijuana an ounce at a time.

"Friends tell people who I am and try to help me out," said Shaw, 46, who designs computer software products from home.

Woiderski submitted his medical marijuana application in November 1990. Four months later, he was approved and awaiting delivery. The supply never came.

"I go through a friend of mine who feels sorry for my situation," he said. "I can't afford living on Social Security, going to school and having enough for a whole month. Two ounces would do and that's $300. I can't do that."

Woiderski helps other patients and doctors fill out applications for the medical marijuana program, explaining that if they are arrested for marijuana possession or cultivation, it may provide evidence that they want to take the legal route. Plus, he says, they will be prepared if the ban on new users is lifted.

The chances of that, many believe, depend less on medical experts than on elected officials and bureaucrats.

Public Health Service officials say the Bush administration policy excluding new marijuana users from the program was political and is likely to be reversed under President Clinton.

"People were narrowly focused on the drug war and couldn't comprehend that people suffering painful chronic illnesses would be willing to undergo whatever side effects marijuana has," said one official, who asked not to be identified.

"It's cheap, it's effective and we don't have anything better," Woiderski said. "There's no cure for us and apparently there's no compassion."