Bay Windows - May 16, 2002
Peter Cassels

Dean, a Democrat who will not seek reelection in November, has presidential ambitions. He's formed a political action committee to raise funds for his travels around the country to support fellow party members in the key fall elections and is a frequent visitor to neighboring New Hampshire, site of the first-in-the-nation presidential primary.

Dean skyrocketed to national attention by signing Vermont's historic civil-unions bill into law and in doing so won laurels from the gay community. During his travels, the governor makes the rounds of community groups. He was in Massachusetts most recently to keynote the annual dinner of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Bar Association May 3.

GLBT support may have fueled the governor's presidential aspirations, but now it's being put to the test. Even though the Vermont House of Representatives on March 15 by a vote of 82-59 passed H.645, one of the strictest medical marijuana measures in the nation, and the Senate Health and Welfare Committee unanimously approved it April 25, Dean has stated repeatedly that he's against it.

The bill, introduced by Rep. David Zuckerman, a Progressive Party member from Burlington, would allow patients to possess no more than three ounces of cannabis and up to seven plants, only three of which may be mature, for their personal use. The original version of H. 645, like laws already in effect in Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, would protect people with AIDS and other serious diseases from arrest and prosecution under state law if they use medical marijuana with their doctors' recommendation. However, the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Dean political ally Richard Sears, D-Bennington, later watered down the bill, essentially allowing law enforcement agencies to continue to arrest people for possessing marijuana, but giving them a court defense if they have no more than one ounce and use it medicinally.

The Senate passed the new version of the bill 22-7 on May 14. Parliamentary maneuvering now could get hot and heavy, because the bill will be returned to the House, where sponsors plan to move to amend the weakened version to its original form, according to the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP). The Washington, D.C.-based organization works to remove criminal penalties for use of the substance, particularly by those who rely on it to relieve the pain and nausea caused by treatments for AIDS, cancer and other diseases.

The MPP criticized the weakened version of the bill because "You could still be arrested; handcuffed, booked, forced to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees and then get off if you could convince the court that you were a medical user," according to spokesperson Bruce Mirken. "We're not satisfied with that. Personally speaking, not just as a representative of MPP but as a gay man who's lost more friends than I want to contemplate, I'm offended that someone who claims to be our community's friend can put someone through that. We know stress is an immunosuppressant. We know fear of arrest causes stress. This is not complicated stuff."

If the House rejects the Senate version, then both bills would go to a conference committee to work out a final version to present to the governor. With very little time left in the legislative session, the bill may die in conference.

Opposed by Gov. Dean

Dean has said he opposes the original House bill despite polls showing the majority of American adults support permitting doctors to prescribe marijuana for their patients. Organizations that have written to the governor urging that the bill become law include Provincetown's Tri-County AIDS Consortium, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA), the New York and Philadelphia chapters of ACT UP and San Francisco's Harvey Milk Democratic Club.

"Many of us have found marijuana to be a useful adjunct therapy for HIV/AIDS patients suffering nausea and appetite loss, often as anti-retroviral toxicities," the GLMA wrote. "The relatively minor risks from using marijuana before more research is done pale in contrast with the harm done by arresting and jailing sick people."

In an interview, GLMA Public Policy Director Pat Dunn reported that the organization also wrote to Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, D-Windham. "We decided it was a well written bill, that it has the necessary restrictions and controls," she explained. "It's a needed change in the law that will allow people with HIV/AIDS and other chronic illnesses access to marijuana for medical purposes."

NGLTF spokesperson Jubi Headley said the organization supports any bill that would provide seriously ill persons with access to medical marijuana and sent out an action alert to its members asking that they write to Dean urging its adoption. NGLTF Executive Director Lorri Jean wrote in a letter to the governor: "As a physician, your support for this bill would be consistent with the recommendations of medical experts. For example, in 1999, the National Academy of Sciences' Institute for Medicine released a report, funded by the White House Office of Drug Policy, concluding that `there are some limited circumstances in which we recommend smoking marijuana for medical uses.'"

That may not be enough to sway the governor. "He is opposed to the bill that passed the House," Susan Allen, his press secretary, told Bay Windows May 10. "He's a physician and he just feels like the scientific questions haven't been answered. He would support an FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] study of the use of medical marijuana." Allen added that she didn't know why the FDA hasn't done a study ? "You'd have to ask them." She said that if the FDA signed off or did a credible study of the medical use of marijuana, Dean could change his position. His spokesperson denied that a possible run for president is influencing his opposition to the bill: "This position goes all the way back to his days in the Vermont House in the early 1980s. He just doesn't believe that the science has been done."

"If that is truly the governor's position it reflects appalling ignorance," the MPP's Mirken said. Pointing out that the FDA doesn't arrest people for using unapproved drugs and even explicitly permits people to go abroad to buy them for personal use, he added: "Politics is trumping science, which has been the whole story of the suppression of medical marijuana since day one. Howard Dean either knows better than this or should know better. I know for a fact that he has had this explained to him by gay leaders and medical people. He is blowing smoke. If in fact he is the community's friend, he owes us the courtesy of not lying to us or not misleading us. Civil unions mean nothing if you're dead and that's the bottom line as far as I'm concerned."

Dean, however, may be softening his position. "The governor is willing to look at it," his spokesperson told Bay Windows May 14 after the Senate passed the weakened version. "He's not familiar with the specifics of the bill, so he'd want to look at it before making a decision."

According to Mirken, if the governor has changed his position, "it's because he's heard from the GLBT and HIV/AIDS communities nationwide that this is important."

Peter Cassels is the Associate Editor at Bay Windows. His e-mail address is pcassels@baywindows.com.

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