|
Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
|
|
US: Pot -- It's Just What The Doctor Ordered
San Francisco Examiner (CA)
Thursday 07 Jun 2001 Website: http://www.examiner.com/ Author: Dan Evans POT -- IT'S JUST WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERED In his home in the Berkeley Hills, surrounded by books and drawings made by his 7-year-old daughter, Dr. Tod Mikuriya seems like a fairly normal guy. It's hard at first glance to tell that his life revolves around an illegal substance: marijuana. In his calm, easygoing demeanor, Mikuriya tells how he has written some 5,800 recommendations for marijuana. That's more than anyone else. Though he sees most patients at his home, he also makes house calls, traveling throughout Northern California, dispensing recommendations to the bedridden. But he also gives pot recommendations for everything from post-traumatic stress disorder to alcoholism. That's why he is under investigation by the Medical Board of California. Proposition 215, passed in 1996, allows ill people to possess and grow pot with a doctor's blessing. But, according to the state, some blessings come a little too cheap. Prop. 215 passed on Nov. 6, 1996 -- 1,612 days ago. So on average Mikuriya has recommended marijuana to more than three-and-a-half patients per day, including weekends and holidays. He acknowledges that he does nothing else, but insists he examines each patient thoroughly. And there's the rub. Mikuriya says it's his vocal stance about the usefulness of pot that brought on the ire of the Medical Board. But the board contends -- presumably based on his astronomical number of patients -- that the Berkeley doctor does little more than a cursory exam before writing a weed recommendation. In an ongoing investigation for more than a year, the board has sought the medical records of about 45 patients. Mikuriya, 67, says turning over the documents would be a breach of patient-doctor confidentiality, and filed suit in San Francisco Superior Court on May 22 attempting to stop the board's efforts. The state says it needs the records to prove its allegations. Mikuriya claims there is a conspiracy afoot to keep him down. State officials are split on the medical marijuana controversy. While some local law enforcement agencies strongly oppose pot possession for any purpose, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed papers earlier this year with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative. Though the cooperative lost its fight at the high court, Lockyer's argument that the state should be allowed to make and enforce its own drug laws illustrates his stance with the drug. The Medical Board complains that Mikuriya gives his consent for pot too easily, not that consent shouldn't ever be given. But it's hard to tell exactly what the Medical Board's view really is. Karin Fetherston, the senior investigator for the board dealing with Mikuriya's case, did not return a request for comment. And Deputy Attorney General Larry Mercer also refused to talk about Mikuriya, saying the government's side is completely contained in its court filings. Some facts do emerge from the filings. The Medical Board complains that Mikuriya recommends marijuana to patients not under his care, who are not all that sick, and fails to conduct anything that would amount to a medical examination. The state claims Mikuriya recommended marijuana to a patient in Nevada County who suffered from alcoholism. Without identifying any specific cases, Mikuriya acknowledged he recommends marijuana for alcoholics. It's a useful treatment for the disease, he said. Marijuana has no real side effects, he said, while alcohol, besides its devastating social effects for alcoholics, is tremendously damaging to the body. "In fact, it's possible to function adequately while driving and using machinery" after using marijuana, he said. Attorney Susan Lea, who is defending Mikuriya against the state, blames the state's prosecutorial zeal against her client on people and prejudices held over from the Dan Lungren era. Lungren, a strong opponent of medical marijuana, was the state attorney general under Gov. Pete Wilson. Lungren raided medical marijuana clubs, shutting down one run by Prop. 215 standard-bearer Dennis Peron. Many in the medical marijuana community regard Lungred as a villain. Lea said many attorneys from that era, including Mercer, still feel it is their goal to silence all doctors who recommend pot. "In these people's minds, if we can get rid of Mikuriya, no one will be around to recommend marijuana," she said. Usually, for a complaint to be filed against a doctor with the Medical Board, says Lea, the patient has to complain. But that hasn't happened in this case. Instead, the 45 subpoenaed medical records represent failed prosecutions, she said. Jury after jury acquitted Mikuriya's patients -- usually charged with possession or cultivation, said Lea -- which upset the district attorneys and sheriff's departments working on the cases. "They've gone to the medical board because they're losing in the criminal courts," said Lea, a Stinson Beach attorney. "You're dealing with a group of very biased people, and they don't like to lose." Mikuriya said his interest in the medicinal use of cannabis started in 1959, his sophomore year of medical school at Temple University in Philadelphia. The useful properties of the drug, he said, simply didn't jibe with its illicit nature. "It's just social mind poisoning," he said. That social poisoning is something the doctor knows a lot about, having been 7 years old when World War II broke out. He grew up in a tiny town in Eastern Pennsylvania. After seeing propaganda films about the nation's then-enemies, Mikuriya says his classmates would beat him up because his father was Japanese. (His mother was German, which didn't help). Sometimes, he said, they would shoot him with BB guns, playing "kill the Jap" and force his sister to watch. The disparity between the pharmacological use of marijuana and its legal status, he says, is a "collective delusional fiction" of the same ilk. Medical decisions should be left to doctors, he said. Law enforcement agencies are making ill-informed medical decisions because of their bias. "Unfortunately, they have the tenacity to think they can make health care decisions," he said.
After you have finished reading this article you can click here to go back.
|
This page was created by the Cannabis Campaigners' Guide.
Feel free to link to this page!