The Case For Medical Marijuana: A Human Rights Issue

15 February 2004

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:

Noelle Davis

In the fall of 2000, I moved to Texas to make a fresh start. A few months later I began attending this church, returning to my Unitarian roots. One of the first Sundays I attended the public forum and the topic was drug policy reform. I had never heard of drug policy reform. I sat on edge while the speaker answered questions I had never thought to ask. As soon as he stopped speaking I went to volunteer. I was so excited that there were other people, in Austin, who wanted to change the drug laws. People who understood the laws and could help me understand how I could help change them.

I had never understood why alcohol is legal and marijuana isn’t. I’ve watched alcohol destroy several of my friend’s lives while the people I know who occasionally smoke marijuana recreationally don’t suffer any adverse affects. In fact, most of the pot smokers I know are well educated professionally employed contributing members of society with no criminal record.

I started reading books and researching on the Internet about the history of the war on drugs. I learned that just as the prohibition of alcohol was being repealed, because it hadn’t worked, the prohibition and demonization of other drugs, and certain classes of people, was just beginning. I learned that Nixon officially declared the war on drugs in the early 70’s with the goal of eradicating all illegal drugs from our society and the planet. Conveniently he neglected to mention how this was going to happen and by when. I studied surveys of junior high and high school students compiled over the last 30 years since the war began and noticed no significant change in the rate of student drug use. I read my pocket constitution and realized that current drug laws were blatantly unconstitutional by the time I finished reading the preamble. And the best part of this journey was when I discovered that there were thousands of people from all over the world working to spread the message that drug use should be addressed as a public health problem, not a criminal justice issue. I decided it was, and still is, my moral obligation to join them in calling for compassionate harm-reducing policies – no matter how long it takes till we are heard.

I began to volunteer with local drug reform groups, helping to organize rallies and tabling at events and conferences. In July of 2001 I helped to organize and promote the Tulia Freedom Ride. We raised money in order to take two busloads of Austin area and national activists up to the panhandle town of Tulia, to participate in the Never Again Rally, which marked the two-year anniversary of the now infamous drug sting. For those who are not familiar with what happened, in the summer of 1999, police arrested 43 people, 12 percent of Tulia’s Black population, on charges of distributing small amounts of cocaine. The arrests were based solely on the testimony of a white undercover deputy who worked unsupervised on the streets and had no photos, sound recordings or witnesses to back up his allegations. Only five of the accused had a previous criminal record but the juries handed down sentences ranging from 20 to 300 years. Thankfully, this past summer Governor Perry finally pardoned the sting victims.

The Never Again Rally turned out to be a great success. I had never felt so empowered, so connected to the world. I was proud of my work and began trying to figure out how I could get a job that fulfilling.

Well here I am, two and a half years later, happy to say I figured it out. Last fall my partners and I wrote a grant with the goal of starting a new organization whose mission it would be to guarantee that seriously ill patients have safe and legal access to medical marijuana under their doctors supervision. We plotted a strategy that would enable us to identify, educate and inspire Texans to embrace this mission and influence their elected officials to vote for medical marijuana legislation. We received the grant, so I am now the director of Texans for Medical Marijuana.

I decided to focus my energy on educating people about the need for safe and legal access to medical marijuana because for many this medicine is the difference between life and death. And while some patients can advocate for themselves, others are to sick. And many people I have spoken with are afraid to come forward because of our zero tolerance policies. There is no mercy in the war on drugs, a war on people. There is no room for compassion, only prosecution, and that just doesn’t sit well with my heart.

I have been blessed with a healthy body and a persistent mind. I choose to advocate for others because it is my way of giving back, of saying thank you for my gifts. I dream that people will learn about our campaign and contact us so they can participate. I don’t expect anyone to feel the passion for this issue that I do. We are all called to support different issues. But I do dream that during this next year people will care enough to sign our petition, write a letter of support or make a phone call to their elected officials, and let others know about our mission. Sometimes it only takes a little time to be the change you wish to see in the world.

PRAYER

Did we get enough love yesterday, on a day designated to express love? Does everyone we love, know how much we love them?

May we see that every day is a day to freely express our love, for all we have is today.

If you are lonely, if your heart suffers, remember you are never alone. The creative force of the universe never stops moving, never stops loving you. You are held in love.

If you are afraid, if your spirit suffers, remember the reserve of courage deep in the pit of you is waiting to be tapped. May you hear this call of your own courage, which tells you that fear is the invitation to change and rebirth.

And if you are in pain, if your body suffers, remember you do not have to be strong. You may do what you must to relieve your pain, you may surrender to your body’s natural instincts, which crave health and healing, and an end to pain.

May our minds listen closely to the call of our hearts, and may our hearts listen closely to the call of the spirit, or that which is so mysterious to us. May we remember that often things are so not what they seem.

We are not separate from each other; that is an illusion. Our minds, our bodies, and our spirits are all connected. Your suffering is another’s suffering, and the pain of another is also your pain.

May the truth of our connectedness sit firmly in the front of our minds, so that the stirrings of our hearts may be confirmed. May we ensure that the right thoughts can precede the right actions of compassion.

May compassion blossom from thought to action.

Amen.

SERMON:

The Case For Medical Marijuana: A Human Rights Issue

Just a few weeks ago, I met Vanessa in Oakland, CA. Vanessa is an executive administrative social worker, about 40 years old. She has Lupus, several herniated disks in her lower back, and rheumatoid arthritis. A few years ago, she had to get around in a wheel chair, and was ready to end her life because she said her life wasn’t worth living. “I was serious about checking out,” she told me. She had looked into what her family would receive from her life insurance policy, and she figured out the right combination of pills to take for a lethal dose. She had a lot of pills to choose from.

Each day her doctors had her take an arsenal of pharmaceutical painkillers: 2400 milligrams of Neurontin – a drug designed to block nerve pain. “2400 milligrams is the highest dose you can give someone without killing them” she told me. 40 milligrams of Oxycontin on slow time release; another 40 milligrams of Oxycodone to wait for the Oxycontin to take effect. Oxycontin is the drug Rush Limbaugh became addicted to. 50 milligrams of Methodon – another highly addictive drug which brittles the bones; 80 milligrams of Paxil, an anti-depressant drug which also serves as a pain blocker, 40 milligrams of Valium, and Deladid as needed, the pharmaceutical equivalent of heroin. All this, each and every day, in addition to fibroid medication.

“I can cut all this in half,” she said, “and sometimes by two thirds if I have medical marijuana.” Vanessa came to the Bulldog coffee shop in downtown Oakland in December of 2002. The Bulldog coffee shop is one of the better known medical marijuana dispenseries in Oakland, in the heart of what is fondly known as Oaksterdam, a spin off of the famous European city Amsterdam, where drugs of all kinds have been legalized for many years. From the street, Bulldog looks like any other stylish urban coffee shop, and anyone can order a hot tea or double cappuccino once they’re inside. If you were a tourist, you actually wouldn’t know that it’s anything other than a coffee shop. But if you have an ID that says you have permission to obtain medical marijuana, you can go in back through a door to a small room that has a booth where sandwich bags of marijuana are sold to patients. You can only get a medical marijuana ID if a doctor has recommended marijuana as a treatment.

Vanessa doesn’t need a wheel chair anymore. She can get around on her own two feet, and she was able to return to work within a few months of smoking marijuana on a daily basis. “There was no way I could work on all those pharmaceutical drugs,” she said. “They turned me into a zombie.”

Not only did all those painkillers render her unable to work, she told me they didn’t even work that well for what they were supposed to do. They are supposed to relieve pain. But as Vanessa pointed out, the side effects of these drugs added too many other kinds of pain to her life – mental, emotional and spiritual pain.

This sermon is about smoking marijuana. Weed. Pot. Grass. Ganja. Wacky tobacky. For those of you who have never smoked pot, you may think this sermon is for the people who are younger at heart sitting in the sanctuary today. But it’s not. This is a sermon for those people, of fewer years or many years, who have become older at heart because of illnesses and conditions that make severe physical pain a daily part of their lives. Chronic pain ages us quicker. I’ll never forget what my best friend Blake told me after he broke his spinal chord and became confined to a wheel chair for the rest of his life. He said, “I feel like I’ve lost my youth. I’m only 25 and suddenly I’m an old man.” This is a sermon for the survivors who fight cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, paralysis, and any condition that causes chronic pain. It’s also a sermon for the people who love them.

Last week Davidson talked about compassion. Compassion, which means “to suffer with.” He made the honest point that it’s not so hard to suffer with the people we are closest to, the people we love and who have been a part of our lives for many years – our closest friends and family. It’s harder to suffer with people we don’t know, like the homeless, or like the people starving in the countless corners of the world, the people dying of AIDS every day in Africa.

It’s true that compassion comes more readily to us if it’s for people we know and love who are suffering.

But let’s look at the nature of this compassion for our loved ones who are in chronic pain. Yes, it comes easier to us. But how long can we sustain it? How long can we watch a loved one suffer without our compassion wearing out? No matter how much we love someone, watching a person we love suffer is exhausting.

Vanessa explained to me, “I was ready to end my life because the pain had turned me into something bitter. I was mad at God, I was mad at everybody. And I also knew that my family was wearing out. Sure, they have always been there, but family members burn out after too long. My pain was starting to kill them, too.”

Pain is a very powerful force in the realm of human suffering. It can destroy the spirit. It can turn the most caring and hopeful people into people who are enraged, into people whose loved ones can hardly recognize them anymore.

Have you ever had to go through this with a loved one? Have you ever had to watch someone you love suffer day after day? How did it make you feel? How did it change your relationship with that person? What if there was something that could help, that could provide effective relief? A drug that did relieve a significant amount of pain, without the side effects? Without the risk of narcotic addiction? Wouldn’t you want your loved one – or yourself – to have legal access to this drug?

I don’t think I need to convince many people here today that medical marijuana works – it’s proven effective for the majority of people who try it for medicinal purposes. For AIDS and cancer patients, it helps them to eat. The treatments for these illnesses can cause unimaginable nausea and vomiting. Even if the treatments are working well against the tumors or the virus, if a person can’t eat, they won’t last long regardless. Being able to eat helps the body’s natural resources to heal itself. Even if you’ve just been ill enough to not be able to eat for a whole day, you know how weak this can make your body. Imagine not being able to eat for long stretches of days and weeks.

You may ask, what about the pill form of marijuana, called Marinol. The main problem with a pharmaceutical version of marijuana is that a pill doesn’t do any good if you can’t keep it down. No, the quickest and most effective administration of marijuana is to inhale it. Marinol may be suitable in many cases, but not all cases. The vast majority of medical marijuana users prefer to inhale it. They can control the dose themselves this way, and it’s the quickest. Nowadays there are devices called vaporizers which allow the patient to inhale a much less harmful vapor into the lungs, rather than the smoke.

With 27 states that have some version of approved medical marijuana use in their laws, I don’t need to convince you that the beginning stages of fighting for this human rights issue have already been won. In most polls, usually at least three quarters of the votes approve the legality of medical marijuana use. The battle to win hearts and minds on this issue has already made great headway. What you may not know is the diversity of uses this drug offers, and just how long our species has employed its use.

“There was a time in the United States when extracts of cannabis were almost as commonly used for medicinal purposes as is aspirin today.” So began a 1971 book entitled Uses of Marijuana. In fact, according to Robert Randall, this country’s first legal user of medical marijuana for the treatment of his glaucoma (which saved him from becoming blind), the history of marijuana’s medical use predates the written word.

“Every civilization since the dawn of man has employed the unique therapeutic properties of this plant.” The Chinese were medically using cannabis 28 centuries before the birth of Jesus, recommending it for a variety of disorders including rheumatic pain and constipation. In cultures widely separated by geography and time there are consistent reports of marijuana’s medical benefits in easing digestive upsets, enhancing appetites, relieving muscle spasms, and reducing melancholia.

British physician William O’Shaughnessy is credited with reintroducing cannabis to Western medicine in 1839 with a forty page article called “On the Preparation of the Indian Hemp or Gunja.” O’Shaughnessy was traveling in India and noted the use of cannabis there for treatment of convulsive disorders, as an analgesic, and as a muscle relaxant. It was this latter quality that led to one of the most famous therapeutic applications of cannibis: the use by Queen Victoria to treat menstrual cramps.

How did such a helpful natural remedy become so demonized? This is where the political aspects of this issue become relevant. Again, we are brought closer to home when we talk about our ability to trust our own government. Not only does the war in Iraq serve the administration’s ulterior motives to secure the control of oil reserves and the lucrative contracts of Dick Cheyney’s post-war rebuilding company, it also very conveniently serves the purpose of moving our attention away from domestic issues here at home. It’s been easy to lose our trust in the government where foreign policy is concerned. But at home, uncovering the truth about the Drug War has made it even easier.

Most of us know about this already. We spend millions of tax dollars each year to arrest drug dealers and users. Meanwhile, as Noelle pointed out, there are no noticeable drops in abusive drug use. The prisons are swelled to the brim with non-violent drug offenders.

Some of these prisoners are sick people who have been arrested for growing or possessing marijuana for their own medical use. Police raids in full SWAT gear barge into people’s homes, search for and seize their pot, and haul them off to jail.

It’s true that marijuana can be abused as a recreational drug. It can serve the need of an addict’s mind to ‘escape,’ much like alcohol can. I would know, I used to be a pot-head. For a long time, it was my drug of choice, but I had to give it up because I liked it a little too much. Marijuana can become the focus of one’s life to a point that is a problem. However, marijuana is not physically addicting, but rather psychologically addicting. The side-effects of withdrawal are quite benign.

This is why it is such an important alternative to the highly addicting pharmaceutical painkillers. Becoming addicted to painkillers harms the spirit and the heart of a person to the point that life may not be worth living. As Vanessa pointed out, being sick is bad enough. There’s already the underlying shame and stigma associated with feeling less than whole. But then to make it impossible to work, to be a contributing member of society, just serves to isolate and depress a person further. “My experience,” Vanessa told me, “is that the vast majority of the medical community just want to give you drugs that you become dependent on. But I don’t want to go on disability, I don’t want to be dependent on drugs or monthly government checks to get by in life. I want to be independent, I want to keep working. Medical marijuana allows me to keep participating in the world.”

There is another reason why medical marijuana is a religious issue outside of the obvious issue of compassion. A big part of the War on Drugs has been lots of government issued propaganda, as is the case in any big war. The buzz word we so often hear is “evil.” The terrorists are ‘evil,’ drug use is ‘evil.’ The word ‘evil’ is a religious term. For centuries it has been closely related to the word ‘sin.’ Millions of people have bought the story that so much of government and right-wing religion have sold them – that drugs are evil and people who use them are sinners.

In October of 1989, a man named Steve was dying of AIDS in a hospital in San Antonio, Texas. He had been arrested for marijuana possession, and in the course of his trial he had won the legal right to use medical marijuana. But the DEA delayed his first legal shipments of marijuana for weeks and Steve ended up back in the hospital. The delays made no sense until the very end of December, DEA administrator John Lawn formally rejected the judge’s recommendation that marijuana be rescheduled for medical use. In Lawn’s view, marijuana had no accepted medical use in the United States. He said, “ending the medical prohibition would unleash sin upon the land and send the wrong message.”

Such sentiments have been repeated in similar circumstances ad nauseum. I assume when they say ‘sending the wrong message’ they are talking primarily about sending the wrong message to our youth. Again, the assumption must be that pot is evil, those who smoke pot are sinners, and clearly to legalize it in any form would send the wrong message to our youth.

But in liberal religion, the wrong message is that which delivers false information, that which is not true. Youth are VERY smart – this morning Davidson is working with some of the brightest 8th graders I’ve ever met for the Coming of Age program. They can handle the truth, which isn’t that scary after all. They need to know the truth so they can make the best decisions for themselves – because kids know when they are being lied to and they will find out for themselves what the truth is. Let’s send these kids the RIGHT message by telling them what is closest to the truth.

What’s closest to the truth is that any drug has the potential to be abused. But the people who become addicts are not sinners, they are not evil – they have a disease. Addiction is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit – it attacks all three of these things. And it doesn’t make sense to call drugs evil, as so many of them are derived from plants that grow naturally on the earth. Most drugs are designed to be medicines. And for some people who are very ill, the marijuana plant is a medicine.

The truth is that marijuana is a God-send for thousands of suffering people and their families. For so many illnesses, the only meds that can be prescribed are pain meds – there is no cure. And there are so many sick people who believe the propaganda, who fear the social stigma – even liberal folks – that they won’t give medical marijuana a try. And why should they if it’s illegal? Vanessa herself said, “I don’t do things that are illegal.” Most of us don’t want to break the laws of this land. So quite simply, it’s time for the laws to change.

The atmosphere at the Bulldog cafe in Oakland, California is one that has been profoundly influenced by new laws that make better sense. There was an energy of hope and healing in that room. Vanessa told me that in addition to the marijuana, it was the community she found at the Bulldog cafe that also helped her to heal spiritually and emotionally. “They know us all by name here, and that is very nurturing and reassuring.” It is changing the laws so this kind of wholistic healing can take place that is so important. It’s time that we stopped segregating conventional medicine and alternative healing methods into separate categories. Nothing in life is so simple, or so binary. We’ve reached a point where we can take advantage of the best of both worlds – we can make use of modern western treatments as well as homeopathics and natural remedies. Legalizing the medical use of marijuana is also an excellent example of how we could begin to regain trust in our federal government.

“Since I’ve started coming to Bulldog, the quality of my life has improved 1001%” Vanessa said. Before I ended the interview, I asked Vanessa what she would want to say to the congregation who was going to hear this sermon. She looked me straight in the eye and said,

“The people who come here are disabled. Even if it’s not visible, they have a disability of some kind. And essentially, as we get older, we get more disabled. So if you still have judgement or disdain for the use of medical marijuana, research it. You too might be in the position some day where you don’t want to take narcotics that leave you slobbering, that leave you spiritually bankrupt. You too might want legal access to an herbal remedy that allows you to continue to have a life.”

So is marijuana a God-forbidden thing, or a God-send? Is it sin or is it grace? For many people in pain it’s salvation, it’s comfort and it’s rest. But it’s not enough to agree here, to say we have compassion. It’s not enough to just “suffer with” people. Finally, we need to act. If our religion is one of love and compassion for all people, especially for those who suffer, for those whose souls are drugged and numbed, and for those who can be freed from their unnecessary suffering when our citizens are freed from the ignorance that is an accomplice to this suffering, then we should ask what our faith demands of us.

Paul Tillich, a great 20th century theologian, once described “justice” as “love from a distance.” All human rights battles have been won through the realization of justice, through enough people loving enough from a distance. This is no different. Let your voices be heard – talk to your friends and family about the importance of legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes.

You can tell them that your faith demands it.