opinion

A humanitarian truce in a lost war
by Eric Jackson

The day these words were written, I took care of a family member with Alzheimer's disease. He's well into dementia, but not nearly to the point that he's never lucid. Actually, for most of this day he was pretty good. Later, though, he was calling for help every few minutes, forgetting that he had just eaten dessert, forgetting that he had just brushed his teeth, forgetting how to run his simple talking book player, forgetting where he had put the blanket that he had shrugged off the minute before, forgetting about who certain family members were, going nearly ballistic when the dogs barked at someone who came to the gate, a succession of irritable moments along a continuum ranging from demanding to frantic. It's an awful thing to watch and hear, a stressful experience that has the potential to shorten other people's lives.

There is, so far, no cure for Alzheimer's. There are few good medications.

However, the medical literature tells us that there is a substance that slows the inexorable progression of Alzheimer's, that calms the panics and rages. It's legally unavailable in Panama, thanks largely to the insistence of the United States government, starting back in the early decades of the 20th century and getting more strident ever since. That medication? It's marijuana.

In November of 2008, the state where I lived for many years, Michigan, voted for Obama by a health margin. By a much larger margin on that same day, it passed a referendum legalizing the medical use of marijuana. It joins a number of other US states in this policy.

Obama? He admits that he used marijuana as a young man, and regrets it as a waste of his time. He has not jumped on the drug law reform bandwagon --- he has enough trouble trying to do crucial business like fixing a broken health care system without spending political capital on this issue --- but the federal government has quietly stopped challenging states with medical marijuana laws.

Our family's insidious health crisis unfolds against a law-abiding backdrop, wherein homeowners who are not citizens will not for humane reasons violate Panama's marijuana laws and risk deportation or dispossession. Different decisions might be made if the laws were different. A brownie a day for the Alzheimer's patient in the family might ease the ravages of his final illness and give everyone around him a bit more peace.

The 1989 US invasion of Panama was purportedly about drugs, and after the fact, purportedly about democracy. When one looks at what happened in the years leading up to the invasion (particularly US backing for General Noriega's and Fraudito Barletta's theft of the 1984 presidential election) and in what has happened since (no change in Panama's status as a major drug smuggling route and preferred place to launder illegal drug profits), it becomes readily apparent that the invasion was mostly about other things. But one of the lessons that the Panamanian political class has drawn from that trauma is that this country is not and can not be sovereign when it comes to drug policies, that on the issue of drugs we must do what Washington tells us to do, no matter how futile and pointless.

But things are changing up north. The Bush administration insisted that California couldn't have legal medical marijuana, but the Obama administration has dropped this position.

Now isn't it time that Panamanians took stock of our own values, and debated our country's own positions? Isn't it in keeping with Panamanian ideas about privacy to show some mercy and allow some choice for people suffering from glaucoma, or the nausea related to cancer treatments, or the wasting that comes with AIDS, or the panics and rages of Alzheimer's? Doesn't the doctor's right to prescribe marijuana as part of the medical treatment for certain conditions fit in with our values?

Yes, if you are a public official who takes this stand, someone will call you a friend of the piedreros, or accuse you of being a burnout yourself. So what? Everybody knows that there are a lot of cruel and small-minded jerks in politics.

Yes, there will be certain religious leaders who will preach fire and brimstone for anyone who varies from US substance control policies --- but what substance was dissolved in that vinegar in the sponge they offered Jesus on the cross? And I challenge any fundamentalist who believes in the inerrant truth of every word in the Bible to show me where the holy scriptures mention marijuana prohibition.

Yes, there will be some who object to showing mercy to an old man in his final illness for the sake of the health of impressionable youngsters. But would it really be all that incomprehensible if you tell people of all ages the truth, that the smoking of marijuana is a hazard to your lungs and cardiovascular system and the ingestion of marijuana by smoking or in other ways probably poses other health risks, but the substance nevertheless does have its legitimate medicinal uses? Has Panamanian education reached such a low point that the adage that the difference between a drug and a poison is dosage is invariably destructive to public health because people won't get it?

Come on, President Martinelli. Come on, you legislators. Show some wisdom. Show some independence. Show some mercy. Legalize medical marijuana, under appropriate controls like other prescription substances that are both medicinal and subject to abuse tend to be.