Randi Kreiss

Pot law is too little, too late for some patients

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My friend looked washed out, wrung out and hung out to dry. Her skin sagged. She moved around her house slowly, as if, with one false step, she might collapse in a heap of bones. I was visiting her (she lives in another state) in the midst of her chemotherapy treatment for colon cancer. She was terribly sick from the side effects.

She said she couldn’t leave her apartment, because she couldn’t be more than a few steps away from a toilet where she regularly heaved up anything she tried to eat. This was punishment, cruel but not unusual. She said she was so nauseated that she couldn’t even fall asleep at night.

She has tried all of the many anti-emetic drugs her good doctors have in their well-stocked medical cabinet. Nothing works. She lives in a state where there is no access to medical marijuana. To complicate matters, as someone who grew up in the 1950s, she doesn’t know much about pot and had never tried it, but has heard stories from other patients about its palliative effects during chemotherapy. She said she was open to anything that might offer any modicum of relief.

So while I was there we contacted someone who knew someone, and we bought her some pot and a vaporizer, which mitigates some of the harmful effects of smoke, and she was able to take some puffs, which in her worst moments offered significant relief. When I had to leave, she had very little marijuana left, and really no possibility of obtaining more.

I can’t stop thinking about her, and the tens of thousands like her, who suffer severe side effects from chemotherapy that could be mitigated by medical marijuana. (I have altered some of the details of her situation to protect her privacy.)

We boast about our world-class medicine and care, but even here in New York, in the living center of advanced therapies and procedures, government leaders’ political agendas have prevented the passage of sensible, robust marijuana laws. In July 2014, New York state passed a medical marijuana law (signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo) that is so restrictive, so limited and so out of touch with patients’ needs that it is nearly useless. Ironically, it’s called the Compassionate Care Act.

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