Medical Marijuana: Patient Challenges and Struggles Featured
Show: Is It Medicine? The Medical Marijuana Debate
Guest(s)
Steele Smith, Dr. Frank Lucido
Topic
Is is Medicine? The Medical Marijuana Debate
Topic Info
Twenty-two states have decided to legalize or decriminalize marijuana for certain medical patients. In what could be the most significant Federal Marijuana case in US history, Steele Smith (who overcame an addiction to the morphine his doctor had originally prescribed, and found improved pain-relief using medical cannabis) and his wife face ten years in Federal prison in a fight to uphold States' rights allowing safe, legal access to medical marijuana.
With more states considering legalizing medical marijuana, the issue of patient’s rights has become a subject of contentious debate. HealthRadio.net and InsidersHealth.com, in a joint production, have created a unique opportunity for the online community to weigh in on the controversy during their 4-part web series entitled Is It Medicine? The Medical Marijuana Debate.
On Tuesday, December 13, at 6pm EST, the 2nd part of the series, Patient Challenges & Struggles will allow patients (including Steele Smith, and others who have chosen to remain anonymous due to fears of prosecution) to explain the medical benefits of cannabis, and their struggles to obtain the medicine that has greatly improved their lives.
With more states considering legalizing medical marijuana, the issue of patient’s rights has become a subject of contentious debate. HealthRadio.net and InsidersHealth.com, in a joint production, have created a unique opportunity for the online community to weigh in on the controversy during their 4-part web series entitled Is It Medicine? The Medical Marijuana Debate.
On Tuesday, December 13, at 6pm EST, the 2nd part of the series, Patient Challenges & Struggles will allow patients (including Steele Smith, and others who have chosen to remain anonymous due to fears of prosecution) to explain the medical benefits of cannabis, and their struggles to obtain the medicine that has greatly improved their lives.
Guest Info
Steele Smith In the summer of 2001, Steele Smith - husband, entrepreneur and owner of an Orange County marketing company for 14 years - suddenly doubles over with excruciating pain and finds himself in an emergency room. It’s his first of several such visits over the next four months. Each time, emergency room doctors can’t figure out what’s wrong, so they prescribe him pain meds. Steele loses 40 pounds. Finally, a rare-diseases doctor orders an invasive scope that finds 11 ulcers in Steele’s duodenum – between the stomach and upper intestines. Steele is prescribed high levels of the newest and strongest acid-reducer, known as Protonix. Due to the gut-wrenching pain, the doctor further prescribes high doses of morphine and sends him to a 'pain' doctor for a follow-up morphine regimen.
Steele and his wife, Theresa, began to realize that Steele had become terribly addicted to morphine. Over the next year and a half, the couple tried over and over to detox Steele on their own, but it didn’t work. The Smiths searched the Internet and discovered a new detoxification drug known as Suboxone. With the help of a certified physician, Steele begins to use Suboxone and over several weeks of this specialized drug therapy, he became morphine-free.
However, Steele was still experiencing terrible pain and nausea and could not function completely – nor could he eat. Steele was given a medical cannabis recommendation and obtained his medicine from one of the many L.A. dispensaries. This was a second miracle drug for Steele: Medical marijuana took away his pain and nausea, enabling him to eat and to become healthy once again. No dispensaries existed in Orange County at this time, so over the next few months and several visits to L.A. dispensaries, Steele and Theresa decided to open a small collective, California Compassionate Caregivers (C3), to assist patients. They opened their home to local medical-cannabis patients and began to grow cannabis for safe access.
On Nov. 1, 2007 at approximately 6 am, federal agents raid the Smith’s homes using paramilitary-style tactics - several officers wearing masks and dressed from head to toe in black break down the front door and hold the couple (who moments earlier were asleep in their bed) at gunpoint. A fire extinguisher is sprayed at their two dogs -- one dog dies four days later. The officers then begin to destroy the home while they look for guns, drugs, or anything else that could incriminate the Smiths. The couples' home is completely ransacked and the front door broken down left wide open for any and all of the public to take furniture and belongings at will. At the same time, the police go to C3's medical dispensary located a few miles away and proceed to confiscate 2 pounds of medical marijuana and a small amount of concentrate – again, leaving this door open to the public to take anything left.
Steele, Theresa and two other defendants; Alex Valentine, a 21 year old patient with Elephant-man's syndrome and thirty surgeries by his twentieth birthday, and Dennis La Londe, a friend of a friend and homeless man that was given a bed only three weeks prior, would be incarcerated in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles – a maximum security, level-five Federal prison. The four defendants were charged with conspiracy to manufacture or grow medical marijuana and are facing ten years each in a Federal Penitentiary.
Theresa is released after 60 days on $200,000 bond – her dying mother's home and two signatures, while all three of the other defendants languished in federal prison for nearly a year. After 10 months, Steele is finally released back to his wife with an electronic ankle bracelet attached to him.
In April 2010, The Honorable Cormac J. Carney, who presides over this case, rules that the medical marijuana issue will be heard as testimony – the first time in a federal court in U.S. history. The case has been continued over a dozen times.
Dr. Frank Lucido, MD, has been practicing Family and General Medicine in Berkeley, California since 1979. Since the passage of the California Compassionate Use Act of 1996, he has been performing Medical Cannabis evaluations, and has written and lectured on the subject. Dr. Lucido is a founding member of the American Academy of Cannabinoid Medicine and founder of MedicalBoardWatch.com and the Association of Independent Medical-Legal Consultants (AIMLegal.org ), and will be available during the webcast to offer his medical perspectives and expertise.
Steele and his wife, Theresa, began to realize that Steele had become terribly addicted to morphine. Over the next year and a half, the couple tried over and over to detox Steele on their own, but it didn’t work. The Smiths searched the Internet and discovered a new detoxification drug known as Suboxone. With the help of a certified physician, Steele begins to use Suboxone and over several weeks of this specialized drug therapy, he became morphine-free.
However, Steele was still experiencing terrible pain and nausea and could not function completely – nor could he eat. Steele was given a medical cannabis recommendation and obtained his medicine from one of the many L.A. dispensaries. This was a second miracle drug for Steele: Medical marijuana took away his pain and nausea, enabling him to eat and to become healthy once again. No dispensaries existed in Orange County at this time, so over the next few months and several visits to L.A. dispensaries, Steele and Theresa decided to open a small collective, California Compassionate Caregivers (C3), to assist patients. They opened their home to local medical-cannabis patients and began to grow cannabis for safe access.
On Nov. 1, 2007 at approximately 6 am, federal agents raid the Smith’s homes using paramilitary-style tactics - several officers wearing masks and dressed from head to toe in black break down the front door and hold the couple (who moments earlier were asleep in their bed) at gunpoint. A fire extinguisher is sprayed at their two dogs -- one dog dies four days later. The officers then begin to destroy the home while they look for guns, drugs, or anything else that could incriminate the Smiths. The couples' home is completely ransacked and the front door broken down left wide open for any and all of the public to take furniture and belongings at will. At the same time, the police go to C3's medical dispensary located a few miles away and proceed to confiscate 2 pounds of medical marijuana and a small amount of concentrate – again, leaving this door open to the public to take anything left.
Steele, Theresa and two other defendants; Alex Valentine, a 21 year old patient with Elephant-man's syndrome and thirty surgeries by his twentieth birthday, and Dennis La Londe, a friend of a friend and homeless man that was given a bed only three weeks prior, would be incarcerated in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles – a maximum security, level-five Federal prison. The four defendants were charged with conspiracy to manufacture or grow medical marijuana and are facing ten years each in a Federal Penitentiary.
Theresa is released after 60 days on $200,000 bond – her dying mother's home and two signatures, while all three of the other defendants languished in federal prison for nearly a year. After 10 months, Steele is finally released back to his wife with an electronic ankle bracelet attached to him.
In April 2010, The Honorable Cormac J. Carney, who presides over this case, rules that the medical marijuana issue will be heard as testimony – the first time in a federal court in U.S. history. The case has been continued over a dozen times.
Dr. Frank Lucido, MD, has been practicing Family and General Medicine in Berkeley, California since 1979. Since the passage of the California Compassionate Use Act of 1996, he has been performing Medical Cannabis evaluations, and has written and lectured on the subject. Dr. Lucido is a founding member of the American Academy of Cannabinoid Medicine and founder of MedicalBoardWatch.com and the Association of Independent Medical-Legal Consultants (AIMLegal.org ), and will be available during the webcast to offer his medical perspectives and expertise.
Website
Host
Melanie Cole, MS
Original Air Date
12 / 13 / 2011
