Ms. Guide, a former drug addict, said that legalization would weaken the antidrug message aimed at adolescents. New York has had a medical marijuana law since 1980, although it has never been fully carried out. So the people the law was intended to protect, those who do smoke marijuana to relieve a medical condition, have technically been committing a crime. Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried, a Manhattan Democrat, has written a bill that would effectively legalize marijuana for the sick. Doctors are allowed to prescribe controlled substances for medical purposes, like morphine, codeine and Valium.
Nobody thinks that undermines our antidrug message to young people.
Marijuana club organizers said the majority of their members in New York City were H.I.V. positive. No one was sure of how many clubs there were, but John Sheridan, a founding member of Cannabis Care, a state-registered lobby group, estimated that there were seven currently in the city. Many of the people at the clubs have tried Marinol, the brand name of THC in pill form, without success. Sometimes nothing would happen. Sometimes I would suddenly get so hungry I would want to throw up.