DRUG POLICY Medical marijuana bill faces hazy outlook BY KERRY MILLER

Although eight states have laws protecting users of medical marijuana from arrest or jail, Vermont isn’t one of them. For several years now, pretty much the only thing standing between AIDS patients and legal pot was the veto threat of then-Governor Howard Dean, who probably didn’t want something as crunchy and controversial as medical marijuana on his record while he was considering a presidential run. Civil unions, after all, would be enough to explain. But compassion for the seriously ill, too? Surely, it would be his downfall.

This year, with medical marijuana bills up for consideration in five states — Rhode Island, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, and Vermont — Krissy Oechsl of the Marijuana Policy Project says chances are good that laws will pass in at least several states. But local supporters of medical marijuana probably shouldn’t hold their breath.

Dr. David Lewis, founder of the Brown University Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies and project director of the Physician Leadership on National Drug Policy, pegs the bill’s chances of passing at practically zero. Based on historical precedent alone, that seems a pretty fair estimate. Of the 32 states where medical marijuana legislation has been introduced since 1978, only two — Hawaii and Maryland — have seen those bills passed. The rest were enacted through citizen-inspired ballot initiatives, rather than the state legislative process.

Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), acknowledges that a "political hot potato" like medical marijuana is "in some ways . . . not well equipped to be discussed in the legislature at all," thanks to the "reefer madness" so entrenched in the minds of many politicians. Well, that, and the fact that support for medical marijuana doesn’t have anything like a consensus in the medical community. Although studies show that smoked marijuana can alleviate the pain, nausea, and lack of appetite associated with illnesses like AIDS, it also carried the same cancer-causing chemicals as cigarettes and other unknown possible risks — as well as what medical marijuana advocates delicately term "side effects," also known by most people as "getting high."

State Senator Rhode Perry (D-Providence), lead sponsor of this year’s Senate bill, introduced a medical marijuana bill last year, but the bill never received a hearing, mostly, Perry says, because she didn’t push for it. The legislator plans to be more aggressive this year, with a bill that limits to three the number of diseases marijuana is available to treat. It also addresses distribution issues more specifically than the previous bill — basically, trying to spell out, in big red letters, "MEDICAL USE ONLY," to get past lawmakers who inevitably equate medical marijuana with evil drug dealers corrupting the nation’s youth.

Still, Rhode Island isn’t nearly as close to getting the kind of widespread support for Medical Marijuana as Vermont. Currently, the biggest supports of H7588 — introduced in the Rhode Island House on February 5 as the Rhode Island Medical Marijuana Act — are the local affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, and chapters at Brown and URI of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy.

College students for pot? Who would have guessed?