Mercy Pushers
Dealers, users go public on medical marijuana
By Leslie Peacock
Doctors or Dope Dealers?
It isn't legal, but in Central Arkansas, visits from the pot peddler are spelling
relief for people with HIV and glaucoma.
By Leslie Peacock

        Sam Smith and Mark, a fellow marijuana dealer, made their way through a
Saline County catacomb of a house, down dark hallways, through many doors to a
stifling smoke-filled living room.  There, fish swam in four aquariums, a
miniature Christmas tree decorated a corner and four HIV-positive men sucked
marijuana on a ceramic pipe.

        The men were regular customers of Mark (who didnt want to give his last
name, for obvious reasons).  Theyd gathered in his living room for a reporters
benefit, and to help Smith make his case for legalizing marijuana as medicine.
Though none had developed AIDS, they were already  suffering precursor ailments
-- nausea, diarrhea, exhaustion -- and using  marijuana to counter those
effects.

        With a catch in his voice, Jearl Mars said marijuana made it possible
for him to get out of bed in the morning, both physically and psychologically.
        "Its not just getting high.  Thats not the total thing.  It relieves a
lot of the physical symptoms, the stress. ...  It takes the load off mentally,"
Mars said.

        Bryan, another of Marks clients, said one joint in the morning takes
care of his nausea for hours.

        First diagnosed in the Navy, Bryan has tried Marinol, a prescription
drug that synthetically reproduces one of marijuanas active ingredients --
tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), for his nausea.  But he dislikes the drug, saying
its slow to work and can actually increase the nausea.  He prefers to smoke
marijuana.  It works faster, and he cant overdose on it.  And he wants to buy it
from someone whos sympathetic to his illness.  Most dealers "are not going to
help me.  [Mars] going to work with me."

        Marks sympathy comes from the fact that hes gay, and was once diagnosed
(wrongly, it turned out) as HIV-positive.  Though hes a dealer by trade, for his
HIV buyers, he calls himself a "caregiver," and offers better service.  Hell
deliver when theyre too sick to come to him, and he  lets them run a tab if they
have to.

        Marks being fairly generous when he lets his customers put off a
payment.  The pot he sells goes for around $40 to $45 for a quarter ounce, an
amount that lasts Bryan about three days, though others said it  would be a
weeks supply for them.

        About 40 percent of Marks business is sales to HIV-positive men, some 20
to 25 clients, he said.  He met Smith last December, after Smith put up a
billboard near the state Capitol grounds.  It carried an open letter to Bill
Clinton pleading for medical marijuana: "Our friends are dying.  Please help."
To the side were the words "AIDS, Cancer, MS, Glaucoma."  The letter was signed
"Sam."

        In their conversation, Smith learned that Mark "had the guts of what I
wanted to do in operation," Smith said.  It was just the kind of system Smith
wanted to track and document in his battle to make pot legal  for sick people.
        "Our intent in not criminal," Smith said.  "I wouldnt be doing this if I
thought it was likely I was going to jail."  Before he leaves Mark, he cadges a
couple of bags of pot to take to a quadriplegic down the road.

        Smith, 45, lives in Mayflower with his ex-wife and his dogs.  He works
odd jobs and is partly through a masters degree in social work.  Hes former
Navy.  And hes grown and sold marijuana, though thats not how he sees it.
        "I dont sell marijuana.  People may buy it from me.  But I make no
effort to sell it."

        For medical cases, "I will make my presence known to patients.  Ill
initiate contact.  But I dont solicit sales."

        This years crop was wiped out by what Smith calls law enforcements
"metal grasshoppers," so the marijuana hes distributed lately comes from other
sources.  For the two years previous, though, Smith says virtually all the
marijuana he grew went to patients of one sort or another.

        Some cynical folks might doubt Smith grows pot out of the goodness of
his heart.  But Smith says in 1991 and 92 he gave away $20,000 worth of
marijuana, and he considers sales just a way to subsidize free distribution.

        "The reason I'm in this, primarily, is I think disallowing of access [to
marijuana] is one of the most incredibly inhumane, hypocritical, illogical ...
situations that exist."

        But he adds, only slightly tongue-in-cheek, "Im an entrepreneur.   I
intend to pioneer a pharmaceutical business."

        Where other people see conspiracies to harm, Smith sees conspiracies to
help his cause.  He believes U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders intends to
restore rules, killed by the Bush administration, that allowed marijuana
cigarettes to be prescribed as medicine.  He believes President Clinton will
support Elders in that effort, and that the public will back Clinton.

        "Every place thats been able to put [legalization] to a vote, its
gotten a bigger percentage support than Clinton got," Smith said, referring to
referenda in Oregon and Alaska.  Alaska at one time had a law allowing residents
to grow marijuana for personal use.

        Its this optimism thats persuaded Smith to be so open about Arkansass
medical pot trade, and his belief in civil disobedience as a way to change bad
law.  "I dont have any fear about doing right. ...  Im going to dare people to
screw with me.  Im putting every bit of my intellect, 20 years of dope dealing
cunning ..." into his cause.

        And he backs it up with religious belief.  "It says in Genesis, God
said, behold, I have given you every herb on the face of the earth bearing seed
... to you it shall be for meat."



Mercy Pushers
        Janice Jones, 43, is a slight, dark-haired single parent who shares a
tiny, immaculate apartment in Cabot with her 9-year-old daughter, Margie.  Shes
working toward an associates degree in English and hopes to become a writer, as
does her daughter.  They live a fairly normal, church-going existence; on a
recent day fresh baked apple pie, brownies and cheese were set out for Margies
after-school snack.
        "Can I eat the brownies?" Margie asked.  Yes, Jones laughed, they  were
safe.  No marijuana in them.
        "I have to put signs on the brownies," Jones said.  "I put Do Not  Eat
on them and keep them in the closet."

        Jones was diagnosed with acute-angle glaucoma in the summer of 92.
Besides blurring her vision and causing excruciating eye and head pain, if left
untreated it can rapidly bring about blindness.  She held up a thimble-sized
bottle of Timoptic, the medicine prescribed for her condition.
        But when Jones took the medication, her blood pressure took a dive, her
heartbeat slowed and she began to have respiratory problems.  A  friend sat with
her through the night, and in the morning took her to the  doctor, who not only
took her off the Timoptic, but said, because of her reaction he was fearful to
prescribe other medications.

        So Jones listened to another advisor: a friend who suggested she try
marijuana, and who knew how to procure it.

        "I told my doctor, Im going to treat it myself," Jones said.  Since
August of 92, she has eaten or smoked a small amount of marijuana daily,
continuing to go to her doctor for checks on her eye pressure.

        "He would never mention marijuana," Jones said.  "He would just say, Its
working."

        What marijuana does, Jones says, is reduce her eye pressure from the
sight-threatening twenties to the safer teens, though it vacillates depending on
the amount and type of cannabis.  At the same time, she gave  up medications
shed taken for 15 years for epilepsy -- a mixture of phenobarbital and Dilantin
-- with no ill effects.

        At one point, Jones abandoned the marijuana to test its efficacy.
After a week off, she ended up in the emergency room with blinding head pain and
grand mal seizures.  She told the emergency room doctor shed been treating both
conditions with marijuana but had stopped; the ER physician said that stopping
the pot had triggered the emergency.

        Jones daughter at first objected to her mothers use of an illegal  drug.
"I told her that knowing that without it, I might not be able to see you ... and
thats giving me the courage to do this."  It is for her daughters sake that she
does not smoke in the apartment, but takes in cannabis only in tea or brownie
form when her daughter is home.

        When she does smoke, she sits outside on her porch.  She said smoking
the drug works best.  The street light, normally a hazy halo at night, comes
into focus as she smokes.

        "My daughter knows what a felony is.  I never have more than an eighth
of an ounce in the apartment at any time," Jones said.  Under Arkansas law,
possession of less than an ounce is a misdemeanor.

        It was the burden on Margie that Jones sought to lessen when, in
mid-November, she stood up at her church, Grace Chapel Foursquare Gospel,  and
told her lifelong friend and pastor and the congregation she was using marijuana
to treat her glaucoma.  She said she and Margie hoped sharing the secret would
make its burden less, and she asked for the congregations support and prayers.
She received their hugs, she said, if  not their approval.

        Jones does not pay for her cannabis, but gets it through a network of
Arkansas growers she has dubbed the "Saints of Sight."  When she can, she
barters for the drug, trading items like clothes, flower seeds, "whatever might
be needed."  She hopes "Saints of Sight" will one day be a legitimate
organization giving help to glaucoma victims who cant  tolerate other drugs.

        "Its important to me that it be recognized as an alternative treatment,"
Jones said.  She eagerly awaits the day her nephew, who suffers from cerebral
palsy, can use it to ease the spasticity he suffers.  "I see it as his Lorenzos
oil."  She plans to bake him a cake.

        "You can argue that we have drugs that are legal that are more dangerous
than marijuana, and that would be a true statement.  But on the  other hand, do
we need another uncontrolled psychoactive drug out there?   Weve got enough
trouble without adding another."

        Dr. Don E. McMillan is the head of pharmacology and toxicology at  the
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and the current Wilbur Mills
professor on alcoholism and drug abuse prevention.  Though he acknowledges that
there is much anecdotal evidence of marijuanas benefits, he does not believe the
plant is "the drug of choice right now for anything."

        Synthetic THC preparations, such as Marinol, are used to treat nausea in
chemotherapy patients.  But marijuana research, McMillan said, has slowed in
recent years because of a lack of what he termed "exciting"  results.

        Though McMillan said he wavers on legalizing the plant, he does not
think its dangerous, especially when compared to alcohol.

        "Im not against its medical use.  If somebody could show a convincing
chemical trial that this was a better way, I would believe it ... but I dont
think [the evidence] is out there."

        Asked about Jones use of marijuana for her glaucoma, McMillan said she
needed to go back "and talk to a physician.  When one gets involved in
self-medication with drugs like this ... theyre vulnerable," both medically and
legally.

        Though marijuana may help isolated cases such as Jones, McMillan is not
convinced its clinical usefulness outweighs its potential threat.   Sometimes,
he said, "in protecting the masses, there are individuals that  pay."