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CBS NEWS - 60 MINUTES
Volume XXIV, Number 11
December 1, 1991
MORLEY SAFER: [voice-over] What you are watching is quite rare. This man and his wife are smoking marijuana, but legal marijuana. They are among only 14 people in the United States who have had it prescribed by their doctors. Applications have to go through the DEA, the FDA, and the National Institute of Drug Abuse, and if all approve, the legal marijuana grown on a government farm in Mississippi is sent to the patient's pharmacist, a month's supply of cigarettes at a time.
Smoking to Live
SAFER: Marijuana is not good for you. It's an axiom. But
for some people, marijuana could be the difference between life and death. That's
what they and their doctors say. The doctors prescribe it and the patients smoke it
to live.
What you are watching is quite rare. This man and his wife are
smoking marijuana, but legal marijuana. They are among only 14 people in the United
States who had it prescribed by their doctors. For Ken and Barbara Jenks, marijuana
is but one more of the myriad of prescription drugs they must take every day.
[interviewing] How often do you smoke these?:
BARBARA JENKS: We usually smoke - well, I usually smoke at least three
to four a day.
SAFER: What would happen to you physically, both of you, if you
went for a couple of days without these?
KEN JENKS: We'd throw up all the time.
Mrs. JENKS: I would get sick to my stomach.
Mr. JENKS: I mean, you couldn't - you get sick, and then you
can't take your medicine, so
Mrs. JENKS: I wouldn't be able to eat.
Mr. JENKS: - and then you can't eat, so, I mean, the weight - and
then you'd start losing weight, so, I mean -
Mrs. JENKS: Having AIDS is like a wasting syndrome, you know,
with the virus and everything. The smell of food, the - just even thinking about
food just makes you nauseated.
SAFER: [voice-over] Ken and Barbara Jenks are dying. He is
a hemophiliac. Eleven years ago, he was given blood contaminated by the AIDS
virus. He unknowingly infected his wife. They are both too sick to work.
They live on disability, barely able to cope. Without the marijuana, they would
probably be dead, would have wasted away because of the nausea brought on by their
chemotherapy.
Before they got marijuana legally, they bought it on the street, or
grew it, until last year, when police burst into their trailer in Panama City, Florida,
and got the goods on them: two marijuana plants.
Mr. JENKS: And then they started, you know, going through my
house, I mean, just dumping drawers and tearing the cabinets up.
SAFER: [voice-over] The police thought they were onto something
big when they found a suitcase filled with syringes and other drug paraphernalia.
Mr. JENKS: I mean, they were going berserk.
SAFER: [voice-over] Ken tried to convince them that the syringes
and the pills were prescribed by doctors. He did not tell them that marijuana was
the only medicine that enabled them to take the chemotherapy without being violently ill.
Mrs. JENKS: You're talking to somebody that never wanted to take
an aspirin for a headache. It's - it's a relief to know that there's something that
you can smoke to relieve the nausea from taking all the medications that you're on.
SAFER: [voice-over] The Jenks were charged with growing marijuana
and possession of drug paraphernalia. In court, their lawyer, John Daniel, tried to
prove that for the Jenks, marijuana was a medical necessity.
[interviewing] Did the prosecution present any
counterevidence?
JOHN DANIEL: None whatsoever, sir. In fact, they even
stipulated in Kenny and Barbara's case that it was beneficial for them and that they would
die without it.
SAFER: The prosecution conceded that?
Mr. DANIEL: Yes, sir.
SAFER: But you lost the case because you couldn't prove medical
necessity, so that doesn't jibe somehow.
Mr. DANIEL: Judge Foster said there is no such doctrine as
medical necessity in Florida, that it's a matter for the legislature to promulgate a
statute that says that it is or is not.
SAFER: But the judge was not an unsympathetic judge.
Mr. DANIEL: Super judge. The sweetest sentence I've had in
20 years of criminal defense work.
SAFER: [voice-over] The judge found them guilty, but sentenced
them to 500 hours of community service. Their only task? To look after each
other.
As decent as the sentence was, the Jenks were outraged that they were
still considered criminals. They decided to appeal.
Mr. DANIEL: Kenny and Barbara said, "Go for it. We're
going to be gone soon. There's going to be people following in our footprints and in
our pain and suffering, and there needs to be some law made one way or the other on
it." That's why they took it up on appeal, and I'm glad to do it for them.
SAFER: Why? They're not exactly the wealthiest clients in
the world.
Mr. DANIEL: No. I'm not exactly charging them, sir.
SAFER: [voice-over] The DEA classifies marijuana as a highly
dangerous drug, in the same class as heroin and LSD. And the only way to get it
legally is to face a bureaucratic jungle, three of them. Applications have to go
through the DEA, the FDA and the National Institute of Drug Abuse, and if all approve, the
legal marijuana, grown on a government farm in Mississippi, is sent to the patient's
pharmacist, a month's supply of cigarettes at a time.
Robert Randall was the first American to gain legal access to marijuana
for medical use. He was diagnosed with glaucoma in 1972. Doctors told him he had
three to five years before he would go blind. One evening, he tried a marijuana cigarette.
ROBERT RANDALL: It was a bit like a "Eureka!"
experience. I mean, I had known in college that if I smoked marijuana, what the
doctors then called "eyestrain" seemed to diminish, but I had never put all the
pieces together, and suddenly they came together. The next morning I woke up and
thought that I was crazy. It's crazy to believe that an illegal drug is going to
prolong your sight, when all the modern pharmaceuticals have failed to do so.
SAFER: [voice-over] Randall is still on prescription drugs, but
his doctors found that the essential drug in relieving the intense eye pressure of
glaucoma was marijuana, which he's been smoking for 15 years. But getting it legally was
not easy.
Mr. RANDALL: It took 14 months from the time of my arrest.
I had to go through -
SAFER: You were arrested for possession?
Mr. RANDALL: I was arrested for growing four marijuana
plants. I had to go through two controlled medical studies that were really
unnecessary. They simply demonstrated to others what I already knew to be the
case. And then I had to wait around for many months while a bunch of bureaucrats,
who were really not very excited about this idea, decided whether or not I would go
blind. It's a very uncomfortable, frightening situation to be in.
SAFER: [voice-over] Only 14 people are now able to get marijuana
legally from the government. It took the Jenks almost nine months to get their first
prescription. Many doctors are reluctant to make the effort, fearing that the
ramifications of even applying for marijuana will affect their reputations.
[interviewing] The Jenks' own doctor, who
prescribes marijuana for them, won't come on and talk about it.
Mr. DANIEL: A junkie doctor. He doesn't want to be called
that. I understand that. He could - it could also be, "I'm afraid I'll
have all of these people coming out of the woodwork saying, 'Oh, I've got a back pain,
Doctor, how about giving me 400 joints?'" I can understand that.
SAFER: [voice-over] But many doctors say their reluctance to
apply for a prescription has nothing to do with bureaucracy. Dr. Richard Gralla, who
heads the Department of Oncology at the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans, told us that the
scientific studies do not show marijuana as effective as other drugs, despite the claims
of Randall and other patients.
Dr. RICHARD GRALLA: There are testimonials for almost any
medicine, and in fact, sometimes testimonials are the germ of a good idea, the beginning
of a good idea. Unfortunately, more often than not, they're just that, they're just
testimonials.
SAFER: [voice-over] But Dr. Lester Grinspoon, who practices
psychiatry at Harvard University, disagrees. He's one of the first physicians to
take a stand on using marijuana as medical treatment.
Dr. LESTER GRINSPOON: It is very useful for the treatment of the
nausea and vomiting which accompanies the use of some chemotherapeutic substances for the
treatment of some cancers.
SAFER: [voice-over] Dr. Grinspoon knows it from the most personal
kind of experience. His son had leukemia and died, but during the chemothernpy
Grinspoon feels it was the marijuana that was keeping young Danny alive.
Dr. GRINSPOON: He would be so tense before he took the medicine,
because he knew what was going to follow, and what followed was eight hours of first
vomiting, and then retching. It's very, very, difficult. He got to the point
where he said, "I'm not going to take the medicine anymore."
SAFER: How old was he?
Dr. GRINSPOON: He was 15.
SAFER: [voice-over] His wife bought some marijuana near a local
high school. At Danny's next treatment, Grinspoon was amazed.
Dr. GRINSPOON: It was absolutely stunning, the difference that
this made. He was relaxed, he had the treatment, he not only did not have nausea and
vomiting, but he asked if he could get a submarine sandwich on the way home. I was
really dumbfounded. I then called the doctor, Dr. Jaffe, who was taking care of him,
and told him what had happened, and so the next time he smoked cannabis right in the
treatment room at the Children's Hospital. Same thing, not a bit of discomfort, ate
afterwards, and it was then that Dr. Jaffe and I went to the head of the Children's
Hospital, Dr. Frye, and suggested that maybe this bore some kind of systematic looking
into. And that, in fact, led to the Salan study, which first established that this
is useful in the treatment of the nausea and vomiting of cancer chemotherapy.
SAFER: But the DEA has maintained for years that marijuana has no
therapeutic value, that it's a dangerous drug that must remain illegal. However, no
one from the DEA would come on this broadcast and respond to the scientific evidence of
those who say otherwise.
Three years ago, the DEA's administrative law judge, Francis Young,
wrote of marijuana, "In light of the evidence, it would be unreasonable, arbitrary
and capricious for the DEA to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this
substance." But the DEA rejected its own judge's opinion and stands firm that
doctors shall not prescribe marijuana.
[voice-over] Except, of course, for those few who are willing to go
through the agonizingly long process of applying. Desperate patients say they would
rather live by buying marijuana illegally than die by playing by the rules. Dr. Ivan
Silverberg hears that all the time from his cancer patients in San Francisco.
Dr. IVAN SILVERBERG: I have yet to hear of a patient who can't
find it. I have heard loud and clear from patients who resent having to go on the
street when they're feeling sick, when they're nauseated, when they've lost 40 and 50, 60
pounds, to try and buy a drug from somebody without knowing whether that drug is
adulterated because it comes off the street, of having to face the possibility that the
person they're buying it from is an undercover policeman. I think all these things
are wrong.
SAFER: [voice-over] But Silverberg says if he had to fill out
that mountain of paperwork every time a patient needed marijuana, he wouldn't have time to
treat his patients.
[interviewing] Why has the DEA dug its heels in
on this and will not allow the general prescribing of marijuana by physicians when you can
prescribe much more dangerous, much more habit-forming drugs?
Dr. SILVERBERG: You're absolutely correct. I think
morphine, for example, Demerol, are far more hazardous drugs, in my opinion, than
marijuana. I think part of it is an entrenched bureaucracy that doesn't want to
admit it's wrong.
Dr. GRALLA: Even if it were available in 10 minutes down in the
pharmacy, I'd be reluctant to write it. It has nothing to do with it - the political
issues that we have in drugs and the drug problem in the United States. It's the
fact that in my own experience in using cannabinoids - in my patients' experience, who
have smoked marijuana, neither marijuana nor the cannabinoids measure up to those drugs
that I have.
SAFER: [voice-over] Among those drugs is Zofran, which has been
on the market only for the past few months. By all accounts, it works wonderfully.
Dr. SILVERBERG: Zofran is a most effective drug which is said to
have an 80 percent response rate, by their definition. It costs $600 a day.
SAFER: And the patient has to have it administered in the
hospital?
Dr. SILVERBERG: Or in a full - in an ambulatory care center where
he's there, essentially, the whole day.
SAFER: [voice-over] If marijuana is as effective as Doctors
Silverberg and Grinspoon say it is, why haven't the drug companies tried to get government
approval for it?
Dr. GRINSPOON: You can't patent marijuana, it's a plant.
They can't make any money. No way. You see, in our country, the way drugs come
into being, a drug company gets hold of a chemical, somebody discovered it has some sort
of effect, they review it, they decide is it worth trying to do it. They have to
invest between $80 and $100 million to get it from chemical to drug on the shelf.
But then they get an exclusive patent for 17 years, and they can earn a lot of
money. How could they possibly do this with cannabis?
SAFER: [voice-over] For the Jenks, marijuana has made their
troubled lives tolerable, and to the doubters they say -
Mrs. JENKS: Do I look like a junkie?
Mr. JENKS: Do I? I mean -
Mrs. JENKS: I wish I didn't have to take the medication that I -
I wish I didn't even have to smoke marijuana.
Mr. JENKS: Yeah. It'd be nice to be to be free of drugs and
disease, but we're not. I mean, we need drugs. I can't help that. I
mean, I've been taking drugs my whole life, and it hasn't made a junkie out of me.
SAFER: Do you ever agonize over, "Why me? Why
us?"
Mr. JENKS: At first.
Mrs. JENKS: At first we did.
Mr. JENKS: But then, I mean, for me it was easier. I mean,
I've been dealing with disease since I was six months old, so it was just like fuel to the
fire. I mean, you know, it was just one more thing.
Mrs. JENKS: He blamed himself because I had gotten it, and I
don't blame him, because he - you know, I love him, he's my husband.
Mr. JENKS: You know, these are the cards you got dealt.
You've just got to play 'em or fold, kind of.
SAFER: The Jenks eventually won their appeal and their criminal
convictions were overturned. The Public Health Service is not accepting any new
applications into the program for marijuana prescriptions and it's considering closing it
down entirely, regardless of what patients say.