From: tuco@frontiernet.net   
      
   Group of 'pot docs' in Calif. stand out for treatment choice   
      
   Medical marijuana legal but still raises authorities' suspicions   
      
   By Eric Bailey   
   Los Angeles Times   
   Originally published November 11, 2004   
   SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - After nearly four decades in medicine, Dr. David   
   Bearman seems the incarnation of a trusted old-school physician. His resume   
   is long, his record unblemished. It's his choice of treatment that makes him   
   conspicuous.   
   For most patients, Bearman recommends the same remedy: marijuana. There is   
   the young lady with epileptic seizures, the middle-age man with multiple   
   sclerosis, the amputee bedeviled by phantom limb pain.   
      
   Bearman's practice, based on a controversial curative not found on pharmacy   
   shelves, has proved both lonely and professionally perilous.   
      
   Although the courts have upheld a doctor's right to recommend cannabis for   
   the seriously ill, few dare do so. Among the exceptions is a tight-knit   
   cadre of about 15 California physicians. Dubbed "pot docs," even by friends,   
   they blithely claim credit for nearly half the estimated 100,000 marijuana   
   recommendations issued in the eight years since California approved medical   
   use of the drug.   
      
   There is Bearman in Santa Barbara and Dr. Frank Lucido, a family doctor in   
   Berkeley. Dr. Tod Mikuriya, a peripatetic medical marijuana pioneer in the   
   San Francisco Bay Area, has written approvals for 8,000 patients. A   
   presidential drug czar once lambasted his brand of medicine as a "Cheech and   
   Chong show."   
      
   The criticism has been accompanied by intense scrutiny. At least 11 of the   
   cannabis doctors have weathered investigations by the Medical Board of   
   California. Half the cases closed without formal accusations. But a few drew   
   blood.   
      
   Medical Board officials say the problem is not the marijuana but the way the   
   doctors practice medicine. Are patients thoroughly examined? Do the doctors   
   discuss other options?   
      
   Joan Jerzak, the Medical Board's chief investigator, says some doctors eager   
   to legalize recreational use "don't mind flouting the law."   
      
   To the pot docs, the attacks are about old grudges that will not die. They   
   say they have been singled out by a law-enforcement establishment still   
   displeased by passage of California Proposition 215, the 1996 ballot measure   
   that legalized marijuana for the seriously ill in the state.   
      
   "Their attitude is, 'This isn't medicine, but rather a way to abet drug   
   abusers,'" said Dr. Philip Denney, who practices as if every patient were a   
   federal narcotics agent. "They have scared the hell out of California   
   doctors, and it's been left to us so-called mavericks."   
      
   The cannabis doctors say they practice serious medicine, focusing on the   
   sick and weeding out habitual pot smokers simply looking for protection from   
   arrest. Marijuana remains a remarkably safe substance, the pot docs say,   
   with tremendous therapeutic potential for AIDS wasting, chemotherapy nausea   
   and other grave conditions.   
      
   Aside from the pot docs, oncologists and HIV physicians write the bulk of   
   the cannabis recommendations.   
      
   Bearman, a 63-year-old family practitioner, figures it might be years before   
   marijuana is accepted by the medical establishment - and by the   
   criminal-justice system.   
      
   "There's no doubt," he said, "this is part of a larger cultural war at   
   play."   
      
   Jessica Griffith, a 27-year-old divorced mother of one, walks into Bearman's   
   office, a metal cane in hand.   
      
   She carries a 3-inch stack of medical records detailing her four-year fight   
   against pain. She ruptured two discs in her back trying to lift a box in, of   
   all places, a health-food store. Griffith tells the doctor she will soon   
   have surgery to fuse her spine.   
      
   Meeting such a patient, someone bearing up under a painful or debilitating   
   condition that could be helped by marijuana, Bearman has a standard   
   response.   
      
   "You," he tells them, "are exactly the kind of patient the voters were   
   thinking of when they approved Proposition 215."   
      
   Bearman's father, a pharmacist, used to tell stories about marijuana's   
   history as an accepted part of pharmacopoeia.   
      
   The son was dubious. He spent his career mostly paddling in medicine's   
   mainstream, but over the years he developed an interest in medical   
   marijuana. When he retired three years ago as medical director of the Santa   
   Barbara Regional Health Authority, he opened a one-room office. Word spread,   
   and the ill flowed in.   
      
   So did a problem.   
      
   One of his patients, a 21-year-old named Nathan with a history of migraines,   
   was busted with a tiny stash of pot in April 2001 while camping in Ventura   
   County. Confronted by park rangers, Nathan pulled out his medical marijuana   
   recommendation from Bearman.   
      
   They let Nathan walk, but a ranger complained to the Medical Board. The   
   board, which receives about 12,000 complaints a year about physicians and   
   investigates roughly 2,000 of them, decided Bearman was worth a look. They   
   demanded to see the doctor's records on Nathan. Bearman refused, citing   
   patient confidentiality.   
      
   A two-year legal battle ensued. Bearman at one point faced a $1,000-a-day   
   fine. But he prevailed. A state appeals court concluded that the board's   
   subpoena was based on "nothing more than speculations [and] unsupported   
   suspicions."   
      
   Like other cannabis physicians, Bearman does not dispense marijuana. How   
   patients obtain pot is up to them, but he sometimes points them to Web sites   
   listing cooperatives that distribute the drug.   
      
   Mikuriya churns out medical marijuana recommendations like a factory, more   
   than a dozen on a busy day. And he willingly acknowledges, unlike most of   
   his peers in cannabis consulting, that he smokes pot, mostly in the morning   
   with his coffee.   
      
   But the doctor is no tie-dyed hippie.   
      
   He looks a good decade younger than his 71 years and dresses nattily. The   
   only giveaway of his specialty: an embroidered logo on his white lab coat   
   showing the snake and staff of Aesculapius, the Greek god of medicine, atop   
   a marijuana leaf. Mikuriya, a psychiatrist, has studied the drug's   
   therapeutic potential since the 1960s, when he directed marijuana research   
   at the National Institute of Mental Health. He has written books on its   
   medical use. Mikuriya's list of more than 100 ills eased by cannabis   
   includes insomnia, premenstrual cramps and stuttering.   
      
   Marijuana is so effective and benign, Mikuriya said, that the bar for   
   patient approvals should be far lower than for prescription drugs. Likewise,   
   the role of cannabis consultants is not to perform exhaustive diagnostic   
   tests, he said, but to determine whether a patient's condition is chronic   
   and could be helped by pot.   
      
   The Los Angeles Times is a Tribune Publishing newspaper.   
      
   _____________________   
      
   Heros all of them.  Keep up the good fight!   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)