Proponents tried to get the medical marijuana measure passed in 1998, but thenSecretary of State Vikki Buckley said they had not gathered the required 54,242 signatures. As the legal wrangling dragged on, the question remained on the ballot, but the results were not tallied. Even without the outcome of Poliac's trial to digest, voters will hear plenty of messages this fall, some factual, many just designed to tug at their heartstrings or play on their fears. Like the pitched battles over abortion or gay rights, the war over medical marijuana is often waged on an emotional front. Pitted against that are the images of hairless chemotherapy patients, skeletal AIDS patients, and people like Poliac.
Cancer patients say marijuana relieves the roiling nausea brought on by chemotherapy.
MS patients say it relieves their pain. And AIDS patients claim it gives them back an appetite. There is already a legal, pill form of marijuana that patients can get with a prescription. I don't want to see people become criminals trying to treat an illness. Chemotherapy patients say they have trouble keeping the Marinol pills down.