• Bob Barr is working for the Marijuana Policy Project.

• Dana Rohrabacher is working with Maurice Hinchey to demand that the feds stop targeting sick Americans.

• And the only pro-marijuana candidate on the 2008 ticket is Republican Ron Paul.

Now Republican Sen. Bill Mescher of South Carolina joins a growing list of Republicans speaking out for medical marijuana.

HIGH HOPES

Pot. Weed. Herb. The sticky green. Call it what you want, but if one state lawmaker gets his way you might have a word for it that you may not have expected to hear in South Carolina— how about “legal.”

Republican Sen. Bill Mescher of the Lowcountry recently introduced a bill to the state legislature to amend title 44 of the 1976 code to say, “Certain qualifying patients may engage in the medical use of marijuana.” “There has never been a public poll on medical marijuana that was not positive,” the senator told City Paper in an interview this week. “The public wants it.”

Mescher stopped counting the number of letters and e-mails that have flooded his office since he introduced the bill on the controversial cannabis and said only one of the first 105 was against it.

Trying to get this bill passed, he says, is something he should have done years ago. His goal for the ganja has roots that dig deep in the past.

Back in the early ‘80s the senator’s first wife suffered a painful death from lung cancer and during her chemotherapy, Mescher watched as she endured a slow and agonizing death— the kind of death he said people wouldn’t let dogs suffer.

What’s worse, he says, is that if medical marijuana had been legal, the horrible pain his wife went through might have been just a little less so.

Of course the use of prescription pot was— and still is— illegal in this state and if Mescher had acted on the advice of certain doctors it would have changed his title from lawmaker to lawbreaker.

“I should have gone out and got some for her then,” he said. “But I was in a high-profile job and if I had been caught buying marijuana it would have been rough for everybody involved… so I didn’t do it. And I’ve regretted that all my life.”

Senator Mescher is hopeful that his prescription pot bill, which is currently in the Senate’s Committee on Medical Affairs, will be assigned to a subcommittee in short order.

That’s where the public’s input is needed, he says, and those in the community will have a chance to lobby on behalf of the bill— something he encourages anyone to do who is interested. (City Paper will publicize the date of the subcommittee hearing as soon as it is scheduled.) “I think if we can fill that room when we have the subcommittee meeting it’s going to go fast,” he said.

“I have hopes that it’s got a good chance [of passing].” Then, if Mescher’s bill is puff, puff, passed it will make South Carolina the twelfth state in the nation to enact legislation to legalize the use of medicinal Mary Jane. “I just can’t believe a legislator— just because of some personal feelings— would keep someone from easing the pain,” he said about opposition to his bill that he believes will better the quality of life for the terminally ill or those with constant pain. “If you’ve ever seen anyone die a very painful death you’d say ‘By golly let’s try it’ and that’s my whole attitude.”

Of course Mescher understands the chronic is a controversial topic, especially in the Bible Belt, but this senator has what he calls “bulldog tenacity” and recalls the entire decade it took him to get tattooing regulated here— something he finally did just last year. He has once also passed a bill within three days. No stranger to introducing controversial bills, either, it isn’t Mescher’s first rodeo when it comes to going against the grain. Leaning back in the chair of his office on the State House grounds Wednesday, Jan. 24, the grey-haired senator, dressed in a dark suit and blue tie, folded his hands and smiled broadly. “I’m the guy who got ferrets legalized in South Carolina,” he said. “I tend to take on the interesting issues.” And about his new medical marijuana bill: “I’m going to plug ahead and hopefully we get something out of this.” And get something out of it he will, perhaps even a kind of closure to the wound that opened so many years ago. “Until I got in the Senate there was no way I could really do anything about it [legalizing medical marijuana],” he says. “But I’ve thought about it a lot and then my niece came down with breast cancer in Illinois and it triggered the whole thing again. I said ‘It’s time that we tried to do something about this.’” In 1978 New Mexico became the first state to legislate in favor of medical marijuana and 17 others subsequently followed, according to the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. (Many of those states later discontinued the governmental programs because of the excessive paperwork involved. Says Mescher, there are allegedly seven people alive today who still use marijuana under a government sanction.) Eleven states right now carry favorable legislation for medical marijuana, some of them reached by ballot measures and others passed through the state legislature.

Pot Policy

If Mescher’s bill is passed, a qualifying patient eligible for a registration card could not be arrested for possessing less than 1 ounce of marijuana or less than six plants. The patient also may not be discriminated against by an employer or otherwise for carrying a registration card.

The way the bill is currently written, the Department of Health and Environmental Control would oversee the issuing of registration cards, which would look similar to a driver’s license and use a current photograph along with an identification number, name and address of the patient and name of the qualified caregiver. A minor could receive a card only if OK’d by his or her parents. DHEC would not be allowed to disclose the names of cardholders, according to the law.

As for who provides the pot, Mescher doesn’t want it to be the state because he feels it will run up the cost and convolute the issue. Aware that the small number of people who oppose his bill believe that medical marijuana might be abused, Mescher says he’s willing to accept that.

Caregivers and patients should be the ones able to grow or obtain the stuff, he says, and not have to worry about the government regulating and taxing it. “I don’t want the government to have to set up a big bureaucracy. I want to make it as cheap and as simple as possible.”

The bill states that “No qualifying patient or caregiver who possesses a registry identification card issued pursuant to this chapter may be arrested, prosecuted, or penalized in any manner or be denied any right or privilege based upon the qualifying patient’s medical use of marijuana,” and no caregiver may be disciplined by a licensing board for prescribing marijuana for medical use as long as it follows certain criteria: cancer, glaucoma, or positive status for HIV/AIDS or the treatment of these conditions; or chronic or debilitating disease or medical condition or its treatment that produces one or more of the following: cachexia (loss of weight and muscle mass); severe or chronic pain; severe nausea; seizures, including epileptic seizures; severe or persistent muscle spasms, including spasms caused by spinal injury, multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease (inflammation of the digestive tract), Fibromyalgia (muscle, joint or bone pain); or “any other medical condition or treatment for a medical condition adopted by the department by rules.”

The bill also states that no one may drive under the influence of marijuana but a person cannot be penalized for failing a drug test after operating a vehicle.

Already the letters have been pouring in from folks throughout the state applauding the sensimilia senator for his courage to help make life for those living with pain or disease more tolerable.

One woman, an amputee from Georgetown who uses marijuana to ease chronic pain and says she couldn’t get by without it, told him she currently gets her supply from the schoolyard near her house. Another guy from Conway said he would have committed suicide years ago if it weren’t for weed.

“When someone says ‘I’ll commit suicide without marijuana’ I think you need to listen,” Mescher says.

The Reefer Republican

Medical marijuana concepts are largely thought of as a liberal or progressive idea with states like California, Vermont, Oregon and Colorado paving the hashish highway for pot reform laws.

For Mescher it’s a health issue and if it’s going to increase the value of life for those he represents then that philosophy should transcend partisan rules and party lines.

Some of his colleagues in the Republican Party think it’s funny that Mescher wants to legalize prescription pot but they also expect it.

“I have a reputation of doing things like that,” he says. “Running off to the sidelines and playing around over there. But I’ve been a Republican all my life because I think they have a better philosophy, but that doesn’t mean I adhere to their platform and that sort of thing. What I think the people I represent need done [I do]… it doesn’t bother me if someone doesn’t like it.”

To some people in the legislature the idea of legalizing marijuana is a joke. Mescher shakes his head as he recalls a fellow senator sending him an e-mail about his prescription pot bill that read ‘I’ll smoke on it.’ Some lawmakers he knows just don’t take it seriously— the mere thought of legalizing a drug with such a bad connotation is enough to make their bowties spin.

To them it’s not serious and Mescher wants them to understand that to him it is. “To me,” he says, “It’s deadly serious.” And though marijuana is mainly perceived harmful by a mostly ignorant cross-section of the seat-belted public whose major cities now fear trans fats and cigarette smoke in bus terminals, a nanny state that may bewell on the way to mandating regular teeth cleanings and permanent crash helmets, the ganja is widely known in the medical community to have— surprise!— medicinal benefits.

And according to the senator who’s trying to pass his bill like a freshly rolled doob, “I haven’t had a single doctor tell me it’s a bad idea.”

Besides, he says, “Marijuana I think would probably be one of the more benign medications that a doctor would prescribe but it’s not going to kill you.

In my opinion you can take it all day long and it’s not going to kill you. It might befuddle you a little bit at times but it’s not going to kill you; a lot of these drugs that these doctors give you will.”

But those doctors are in a pretty bad spot themselves right now. Big Brother plans on clogging their pipes no matter what the state law says.

“The Federal Government says this thing is illegal and we’re going to throw everyone in the hole who’s caught using it,” Mescher argues. “So here’s a doctor who thinks his patient might be benefited by this but in the back of his mind says, ‘If I got caught doing that I could lose my license.’ Now, few people are going to take the chance. That’s the problem we’re in with the Federal Government in there. But the other states are saying ‘The hell with Federal Government.’”

And what about doctors or people with registration cards who abuse their privilege? Well it’s just going to happen. The good outweighs the bad on this issue anyway, so deal with it.

“There’s not a single program that you can develop that someone isn’t going to scam,” Mescher says. “And they’ll do it to this, I accept that.

Somebody’s going to find a way to abuse it no matter what it is. So we take care of that. We accept that fact and go on.”

Pot in the Palmetto State

Looking at other states’ pot laws, the Palmetto State is pretty harsh on hash. Possession of less than 1 ounce of marijuana here is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum sentence of 30 days in jail and between $100 and $200 fine.

The sale or trafficking of anything less than 10 pounds is a felony with a maximum penalty of five years in jail and $5,000 and doubles if sold to a minor or done so within a half mile from a school, public park or playground.

Possession of paraphernalia is a civil citation that carriers no jail sentence and only a maximum $500 fine, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

As for now, Mescher is focused on getting the laws changed to protect users of marijuana for medical purposes only but he does believe that if pot was legalized across the board the crime rate would drop as would the number of people in prison.

Back in his office Mescher stands and smiles, “But that’s for another day,” he says.

Source

If Democrats feel that marijuana is their political issue, they may be in for a rude awakening.

Misunderstanding Republicans

Republicans come in many stripes. The militant moralism of the Pat Robertson bunch may be a vocal faction, but they do not make up the bulk of the Grand Old Party. And although they have recently been drowned out by the shrill cries of the so-called “values voters,” libertarian Republicans are beginning to re-emerge as a force in the GOP.

If they believe that they are eventually going to lose the marijuana issue, libertarian-minded Republicans will begin to ask what they can get in return. And college-aged voters would be quite a prize. A principled stand on federalism would be a smart move as it would encourage young voters to vote Republican in the interests of medical marijuana, while reasserting the states’ rights that would give the religious right a glimmer of hope in their fight to overturn Roe v. Wade.

In order for the Dems to retain their advantage on this issue, they would have to speak out. But there is a serious lack of spine in the Democratic Party. Hillary is mum on marijuana. And Obama smoked it while he was blowing lines in college, but even he refuses to address the issue directly.

As long as Democratic Party leadership believes that marijuana reformers will always be with them, they will continue to take us for granted. They will continue their silence and their political cowardice. If the Republican trend continues, Democrats may eventually regret that decision.

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