thousands from southern villages and by a past that it has never been allowed has to break the law. I'm a member of dumped in the forests, to log and to die. to understand. While the survivors of the media elite, who lives in , He leads expeditions into the hinterland the Gulag generations still live, there so I wasn't at high risk. But plenty of searching for a trace of their settlements. needs to be a reckoning, a Soviet Nurem- sick people get arrested, and plenty of There is not much to find: a ruined hut berg which might influence the attitudes them go to jail. or a marked grave, if he is lucky. of the new Russia before it is too late. There are three common arguments For Russia's is the holocaust that But it will never happen. No one against the medical use of marijuana, all worked, that devastated a continent, wants it. Not even Vladimir Mityn, a of them faulty. and then disappeared into a new ruling man who wanders through forests in The flrst is that THC, the main active class. The society it leaves behind is search of histor)'. "You see," he explains, ingredient in the drug, is available in a hopelessly compromised, still tempted "I was a Communist myself." D legally prescribable pill form. But the pill has problems. It's expensive. Because it's a pill, and therefore slower acting, peo- ple have trouble adjusting the dosage; Pot Luck they often flnd themselves taking too much. It also seems to cause high levels RICHARD BROOKHISER of anxiety and depression. In my case, I thought treating nausea with a pill was not a bright idea. To deal with this, I took the latest anti- The second argument is that smoked nausea drugs, including Zofran, and I marijuana has never been tested scientif- also did self-hypnosis and mental imag- ically. This is not entirely true. One test ing. These all worked—up to a point. was done at UCLA in 1970 for the Los But beyond that point, I needed extra Angeles Police Department, which help, and so I smoked marijuana. wanted to prove that pot smoking dilat- I had smoked marijuana maybe ten ed the pupils. The researchers found that times in college, during the Seventies. I it contracted the pupils; they also dis- even inhaled. I stopped because I foimd covered that marijuana relieved pressure I didn't like smoke, or being high, or the within the eyeball. This is why marijua- conversation of pot-heads. I turned to it na is useful in treating glaucoma. when I got cancer because marijuana But it is true that it is difficult to test gives healthy people an appetite, and marijuana. That is because the govern- prevents people who are nauseated from ment makes it so. The case of Dr. throwing up. None of my doctors or Donald Abrams at San Francisco Gener- nurses at University Medical al Hospital is instructive. Dr. Abrams is Center, or Memorial Sloan-Kettering, an AIDS researcher who wants to test discouraged me from doing this. They the efficacy of smoked marijuana in WASHINGTON, D.C. had all had patients who had used mari- treating the wasting syndrome. For AM a conservative Republican. The juana to fight nausea, and who had more than two years, he tried to get only reason I didn't vote for Barrj' reported good results. I had good results marijuana legally from the National In- I Goldwater was because I was nine too. Because of the marijuana, my last stitute on Drug Abuse for his experi- years old at the time. I am for medical two courses of chemotherapy were marijuana because of my politics. But almost nausea-free. I'm also for it because I've had to use it. There was only one problem—I had to Any sick person As a political journalist, I mark the become a criminal to do this. milestones of my life by election cycles. Cancer patients are not the only peo- who wants to use On the eve of Ronald Reagan's election ple in this bind. AIDS patients who have I got married. On the eve of Bill Clin- the wasting syndrome report that mari- marijuana to help ton's I got testicular cancer. The treat- juana gives them an appetite again. ment was straightforward—an opera- Glaucoma patients flnd that it arrests the himself has to tion, followed by a rather harsh form of deterioration of their eyes. People with chemotherapy. Any chemotherapy is chronic migraines, epilepsy, and multi- break the law harsh, because all chemotherapy is poi- ple sclerosis use it to relieve their symp- son. You're dumping poison into your toms. A good summary of all these expe- ments—to no avail. So doctors cannot bloodstream, killing millions of cells, in riences can be found in Marihuana: The prescribe marijuana because it hasn''t order to kill the thousands of malignant Forbidden Medicine, by Lester Grinspoon been tested, but doctors aren't allowed to cells, which will not recover. Because it MD, and James B. Bakalar. Dr. Grin- do any tests. This is a classic Catch-22. is poison, the body wants to get rid of it. spoon is a professor of psychiatry at The third objection is that by legaliz- That's why chemotherapy causes nausea. Harvard Medical School, and the book is ing marijuana in one area, we will be set- published by Press, so ting a bad example to a society engaged Mr. Brookhiser, an NE senior editor, testified this is not something downloaded from in a war on drugs. In fact we will be set- before the Subcommittee on Crime of the the Internet. But any sick person who ting no example at all. The availability of House Judiciary Committee. wants to use marijuana to help himself morphine in hospitals is not the reason

NOVEMBER 11, 1996 / 27 people smoke crack. A hairless cancer principles, but an extension of them. I What a comfort to her that they coul 1 .. patient with an IV tube in his arm is not am for law and order. But crime has to be dowdy and suburban without bein' ' a come-on for a pusher. be fought intelligently, and the law dis- like the "good Republican" next dooK The connection between the issue of graces itself when it harasses the sick. I They loved it. Cher discovered that sh: medical marijuana and the war on drugs am for traditional virtues—I support the couldn't go wrong bashing Republicans. runs the other way. The reason we don't Christian Coalition, and I supported the Likewise, at the AIDS Candlelight allow medical use is because of the spill- Moral Majority. But carrying your March the following evening, one of the over of an extreme war-time psychology. beliefs to unjust ends is not moral, it is most popular slogans was an assurance National Review has taken a stand on the philistine. Most important, I believe in that the dead would be remembered war on drugs, but it is not relevant here. getting government off people's backs. "with our votes." If you think the war is wrong, then the We should include the backs of sick peo- Somehow I don't think those who ban on medical marijuana is simply one ple trying to help themselves. cheered lustily at this were Dole voters. symptom among many of its excess and My cancer is gone now; I was lucky. Some of them, indeed, must have been folly. If you think the war is right, then God forbid that anyone in this room among the ACT UP members who had the ban is an irrelevant and over-zealous should ever need chemotherapy. But demonstrated at the Dole-Kemp head- off-shoot, like "fighting the Kaiser in statistics tell us that many of us will. Let quarters earlier in the day by chanting: World War I by changing the German me assure you that, whatever you think "Dole, Kemp, you can't hide/We charge names of Midwestern streets. now, or however you vote, if that you with genocide." Yet to many, point- I want to end by addressing my fellow moment comes to you, you will turn to ing out that such language is perhaps a Republicans. My support for medical marijuana. Extend that liberty to your bit exaggerated would seem insensitive marijuana is not a contradiction of my fellow citizens. • • D to the plight of those whose political voice depends on waving the bloody quilt of their victimhood. Quilted Logic Mind you, it is hard not to sympa- thize. The militar)' language of "victo- JAMES BOWMAN ries" and "losses" seems almost ines- capable in the context of the mem- orialization of so many young men (for the victims are overwhelmingly male), The one letter's difference seemed typ- so much loved, and so fondly remem- ical of the delicate ambiguities occasion- bered. It was not a line of metaphor ally to be met with during Quilt neglected by the quiltmakers either. One Weekend in Washington. Another came of their publicity logos pictured a needle on Eriday evening at the Crystal and thread with the slogan: "Not all bat- Gateway Marriott in Arlington, when tles are fought with a sword." Among the outgoing president of PFLAG, the the militar)' allusions on the quilt panels support group for parents, friends, and themselves I even found quoted the last families of lesbians and gays, announced two stanzas of Lt. Col. John McCrae's the arrival of the famous daughter of "In Flanders Fields," with their famous Sonny and Cher. "I'd like," she said, "to exhortation to "Take up our quarrel with introduce Chastity." the foe." It seems almost churlish to A forlorn hope, I fear. Chastity, the point out that the heroes of hedonism active lesbian, was the hit of the evening have been killed not by their putative I (together with her mama); chastity the enemies but by each other. 'i Christian virtue was an embarrassing Just as moving as the tributes to the I relation the very mention of whose name dead, however, was a sort of revival would have spoiled the feast. Cher, it meeting called the Second Annual WASHINGTON, D.C. should be said, looked terrific when she National Coming Out of Homosexuality OU ARE gone but your guilt arrived in a fetching black bib overall, Day, sponsored by Gary Bauer's Family remains behind." Taken aback, black high heels, white top, and black Research Council. As part of this effort, I paused for a moment in Mexican-style vest to "complete her an opposition group to PFLAG called reading the message scrawled on one of coming-out process." Confessing that PFOX (Parents, Family, and Friends of the panels of the AIDS quilt. For just a she had been surprised, at first, by her Ex-Gays) convened on the West Front moment in my perusal of this acreage of own "unCherlike" (i.e., uncool) attitude steps of the Capitol. This small group of brightly colored memorial displayed on to her daughter's homosexualit)', Cher ex-homosexuals and their supporters the national Mall, I thought that someone went on to say that she was glad to have spoke to an even smaller group of jour- had broken with the relentlessly political had the chance to become "a little more nalists (one of whom turned out to be a spirit of the occasion. But no, it turned tolerant person." Besides, she told the heckler from Lesbian and Gay New out it was not a "g" but a "q"—his quilt PFLAG members, "so many of you are York), offering up their testimony about not his guilt which remained behind. older and that's so eooll"—because years spent "in the lifestyle" and more "when people see you, it's not like years spent painfully trying to get them- Mr. Bowman is American editor of the they're seeing guys in drag on Chris- selves out of it. It was heart rending. For Times Literary Supplement. topher Street." (Continued on page 64)

28 NATIONAL REVIEW / NOVEMBER II, 1996