MARIJUANA AS MITZVAH

[Ferre]

Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 07:44:09 -0800

From: "D. Paul Stanford" <stanford@crrh.org>

Subject: 006 CA: Marijuana As Mitzvah

 

Newshawk: Jane Marcus

Pubdate: Wed, 18 Dec 2002

Source: Los Altos Town Crier (CA)

Copyright: 2002 The Town Crier Company Inc.

Contact: bruceb@latc.com

Website: http://www.losaltosonline.com/latc.html

Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/245

Author: Cynthia Marshall Schuman / Special to the Town Crier

Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California)

Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

 

MARIJUANA AS MITZVAH

 

Local Temple Supports Drug's Therapeutic Use

 

Susan Gaskill had many of the things that her friends had: a husband, a

son, activities at her temple. She also had something that they didn't

have: AIDS.

 

She couldn't eat. Her weight dropped to 85 pounds, and her only nourishment

came from a feeding tube inserted into her shoulder.

 

And then she tried pot. "When Proposition 215 was passed, she was able to

go down to the club in San Jose and get her card and get marijuana. It

enabled her to eat so that she could gain weight, take the medicine that

she needed to take, and she got two more years of life before she passed

away in May of 1999," her friend Jane Marcus said.

 

The rub? She was using the drug illegally. While California and several

other states legally allow the use of marijuana for medical reasons,

federal law -- which overrides the states' authority -- says otherwise.

 

To Gaskill's friends, this prohibition was a call to action. Even before

Gaskill died, Beth Am Women, a group at Congregation Beth Am, the Los Altos

Hills temple where she worshipped, had begun organizing to protest the

federal decree.

 

"We had a panel at the synagogue in June 1998 and had a rabbi from Stanford

speak and the chairman of the California Medical Association's task force

on medical marijuana, a religious studies professor, and an assistant

attorney general," Marcus said.

 

The outgrowth of that discussion group was a proposal to the umbrella

organization of Beth Am's women's group, called Women of Reform Judaism.

Beth Am Women presented a resolution -- first to a regional group, then to

the larger group -- recommending that they endorse the use of marijuana for

medical reasons.

 

"It was unanimous; wherever we presented the resolution, there was enormous

support for it," Marcus said.

 

The impact of this resolution's adoption is that now, Women of Reform

Judaism has a platform on which to address the topic. It gives them clear

directions on how the organization would respond if asked a question about

the issue.

 

"For example, there was an ad taken out in support of medical marijuana in,

I think, The New York Times. When the Women of Reform Judaism were

approached as to whether they would be signatories to this ad, all they had

to do was look at our resolution and, so yes, they became signatories,"

Marcus said.

 

In 2001 the national group presented Beth Am Women with an award for

special achievement on this project.

 

Indeed, public support for allowing the medicinal use of marijuana appears

to be on the upswing. According to "State by State Medical Marijuana Laws,"

published in 2001, "Eight states have laws that protect patients who

possess and grow their own medical marijuana with their doctor's approval."

 

In addition, three California cities directly challenged Federal law by

deputizing local medicinal pot farmers. The discussion was opened earlier

this year, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San

Francisco upheld the rights of seriously ill patients by allowing them to

accept recommendations from their doctors for marijuana.

 

Canada is also expected to decriminalize marijuana possession.

 

HR 2592, a bill that would have reclassified marijuana so that doctors

could prescribe it, died in Congress, denying medicinal pot users the full

blanket of legal support that their advocates want. So, more than four

years after that first feat of activism, Beth Am Women are still at work.

 

They produced an informational video with accompanying teaching and study

guides that they distribute to temples on a regional basis.

 

The group also sponsored another panel discussion in late October, attended

by roughly 25 people from Beth Am and from the community at large.