Today, a four-physician Advisory Board recommending expanding and facilitating the qualifications for medical cannabis. The board, which advises the New Mexico Department of Health on its medical cannabis program, voted to allow patients suffering from behavioral disturbances related to autism, traumatic brain injury, mental retardation or dementia to use medical cannabis and voted unanimously to eliminate the requirement that chronic pain sufferers get a second opinion from a specialist to qualify for medical cannabis.

Today’s hearing also included an update on the medical cannabis program, which according to Program Manager Dominick Zurlo now has 1448 patients (11 of the total cumulative patients enrolled are now deceased) and only five licensed producers. The numbers are impressive, but so is the backlog: 40 would-be producers are waiting for approval, some patients still can’t get legal cannabis and even Zurlo recognizes that the program “ha[s] not yet met patient need.” Details from the meeting and updated figures after the jump.

The board’s first order of business was a petition from Albuquerque nurse practitioner Bryan Krumm, who is also the director of New Mexicans for Compassionate Use and has a history of standing up for medical cannabis. Krumm highlighted the experience of an autistic patient who had been helped by Marinol, a synthetic form of THC. The board voted 3-1 in favor of Krumm’s petition, with the only misgivings coming from oncologist Tim Lopez, who cited a dearth of medical evidence for using cannabis to treat autism.

“There is limited evidence,” Krumm tells SFR. “They just haven’t allowed the research, so you’ve got to look at the anecdotes.” It’s a classic chicken-or-the-egg conundrum: Since cannabis isn’t technically legal, it’s hard to get funding or even permission (at least in the US) to research its medical uses. But without allowing certain medical uses—based necessarily, in Krumm’s view, on anecdotal evidence from doctors and nurses—new research will be hard to come by.

The second petition, to allow a general category of “autoimmune disorders” as a qualifying condition, was rejected; most board members deemed the category too broad.

Perhaps the biggest victory for medical cannabis patients, though, was the Board’s unanimous decision to eliminate the need for a second opinion on chronic pain. Dr Linda Gorgos, the Infectious Disease Bureau Medical Director, noted that 32 percent of New Mexicans (as compared to 12 percent of Americans) live in areas with a shortage of primary care physicians. Medical resources are largely concentrated in Bernalillo County, Gorgos said, and nearly a quarter of New Mexicans are uninsured—so requiring a specialist’s opinion can make qualifying for medical cannabis unattainable for many sufferers of chronic pain.

“This is just a terrible burden on so many people,” board member Dr Eve Elting said. “There are no specialists who will sign the paperwork. It’s a real disservice to the patients.” In the ensuing public comment period, plenty of patients, providers and even the program’s former medical director, Steve Jenison, attested to this problem.

For now, the board’s advice is just that—advice. Last month, Health Secretary Alfredo Vigil rejected two new qualifying conditions the board had recommended, citing a lack of supporting medical evidence.

“We’re going to have this problem over and over again unless we become more forceful,” Elting said, referring to what many attendees see as Vigil’s unwillingness to take chances with new qualifying conditions.

While parents of autistic adult children and chronic pain sufferers who can’t afford a specialist wait for Vigil’s decision on these latest recommendations, though, the Medical Cannabis Program would do well to focus on serving its existing patients, approximately 70 percent of which are below 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($43,320 for an individual). That will mean qualifying more producers—and making sure the ones that are qualified are actually serving patients.

According to charts like the one below, furnished at the hearing by the Dept of Health, at least one of the five producers licensed to provide medical cannabis isn’t actually providing it. To wit (click to enlarge):

This next group illustrates prices and delivery fees for each producer. (Note: Prices in the top chart are per gram.)

…and this one itemizes New Mexico’s medical cannabis patients according to qualifying conditions and county of residence.

For more charts and information, visit the DOH’s Medical Cannabis Program site.

I’m leaving you. I’m moving west and filling up my border state bingo card. It’s an economy thing, a weather thing, a move-close-to-close-friends thing. Lest you think I’ll forget you, I’ve put together this list of places, people, issues that will always stick with me. And I’ll also tell you what I never got to do, but wish I had and will haunt me until I return.

Things I’ll Miss:

1) Aztec Cafe. A great city, to me, requires a great coffee shop, a place with cheap cups of joe, free wireless and a pack of regulars who make it less a hangout and more a second home. When I first came to check out Santa Fe to decide whether I could live and work here, Julia had me meet her at Aztec. Two years later, a day doesn’t feel complete unless I’ve spent at least an hour in Sarah Flori’s sanctuary for the hip, the hard-up and the hopeful. I’ve given them a hard time in print over the years—when Aztec Street was called “no man’s land” by the city’s parking enforcers, when Corey discovered a gross bodily secretion in the sink during one of Aztec’s dance parties—but overall, the story of Aztec has been one of complete reassurance. Though I’ve seen the barista staff change many times over (some friendlier than others, some more transgendered than others), I’ve watched the shop expand incredibly during an economic recession. Since I’ve been here, they’ve started serving beer and gourmet breakfasts (not necessarily together) and picked up new business from the Rail Runner. If I could pick up the entire cafe and fit it into the back of the Penske truck, I’d reinstall it in the nearest empty space to my new office. I love you Aztec.

2) Frank Ortiz Dog Park. One of the clinchers in accepting this job in Santa Fe had nothing to do with news. Rather, my 7.5 pound terrier—in no uncertain combination of barks and whimpers—conveyed to me that the dog park was where she wanted to be, forever and ever and ever. For the first year, we spent an hour there every day at dusk. Unfortunately, when I moved to the other side of town, it became a weekend expedition, with Marlowe tucked all comfy into my “Outward Hound” dog pouch. Frank Ortiz isn’t so much a dog park as it is a dog reserve, huge open spaces with winding trails and a view second only to the Cross of the Martyrs. I’ve never seen my dog so full of liberated glee. She’s hands down the princess of the park and, frankly, probably achieved more notoriety for her adorable ninja moves, wiggling and head-first snaps than I have with my bylines.

3) The Roundhouse. My first full-time job out of college was in a weekly newspaper covering exclusively state government and politics in Phoenix. I love legislatures, I love agencies, I love governors and over the years I’ve realized that daily American life is affected more by state government decisions than those of whomever we send to Congress and the White House. The 2008 legislative session will remain one of my fondest career adventures: all the energy and ideas and controversies and rumors from the entire state packed into one building on 60-day deadline. I watched New Mexico repeal the death penalty, kill domestic partnerships and quibble over the best way to keep our politicians honest. I’ll miss the competitive camaraderie of the Capitol press corp, the late night debates, the cheap sandwiches. The good news is thanks for Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones, Sen. Mark Boitano and New Mexico’s fierce journalists and ethics watch dogs, I’ll be able to watch or listen (depending on the body) to webcasts from out there in Cali.

4) The Press. San Diego County’s population is 50 percent bigger than all of New Mexico’s and consequently the mediasphere is complicated, competitive and, to be honest, a little bit daunting. Over the years—and perhaps this has a lot to do with the sometimes incestuous flow of journalists from one New Mexican publication to another—I’ve felt like I toiled in a statewide, virtual newsroom. I’ll miss not only my coworkers here at SFR, but my friends and colleagues on the blogs and Twitter, at the dailies, the radio stations, the TV networks, and those in the emerging new media. (Thankfully, Matthew Reichbach of NMFBIHOP and the New Mexico Independent has agreed to ride with me in the moving truck.) I’ll also miss ribbing Joe Monahan. A couple months back, I initiated a few online meetings between the state’s more tech-savvy journalists in the hopes of creating an electronic press club and an web media awards competition. I conducted a survey, which filled me with hope for New Mexico, which still continues to lag behind the rest of the nation in Internet technology. I just hope that someone takes up the mantle and makes a club happen.

5) My office. I’ve worked in cubicles and behind counters, I’ve worked in large warehouse newsrooms and in closet-sized video libraries. Once David Alire Garcia left the Reporter in early 2008, I took over his space, a 10 foot by 10 foot (appx) enclosed space with a window and a comfy plaid couch, where I’ve spent many night in the midst of cover story deadlines. I meticulously taped up each of those covers on the wall (just beneath the entire text of the UN Declaration of Human Rights), hung all my press passed on a hook and no matter how messy it got, I only got a little bit of shit for it. I’ve been led to understand that I’ll have a bit less space in SD, and the office isn’t exactly climate controlled.

6) Snow. As a Phoenix native, I didn’t see snow fall until I was 21 years old and, before moving to Santa Fe, I’d never lived in a place with such defined seasons. Whenever snow fell on Santa Fe, you could catch me at least once a day marveling at the fact that something white and solid was falling from the heavens on the desert. Nothing suited me more than bundling up in my ratty trench coat and frayed hoodie and fingerless gloves and following the rail trail, on foot, into town. Then again, I’m also pretty glad to be getting out of here before winter descends.

7) Zozobra. Nuff said.

I’ve left a lot of people and places out, because I could go on forever and this post is already longer than most blog readers’ attention spans. You’re all irreplaceable.

Now, I’m not one for regrets but there are plenty of things I wish I’d done while I was here….

Things I Wish I’d Done:

1) Bill Richardson. In 2007, the election was on my mind and that’s one reason I jumped at the chance to cover the 2008 election from a swing state. As a bonus, the governor was running for president—and with his international endeavors, he seemed to be a man after mine own heart. In more than two years I was never given the opportunity to interview Bill Richardson. I sat in press conferences and I shook his hand at a pool party at the DNC. Now, regarding this pool party. Prior to the DNC, Richardson personally agreed to grant us a short interview in Denver. This never happened and while I could’ve posed a few questions at the party, I decided to respect press coordinator Caitlin Kelleher’s request to wait until a more opportune time. This was a mistake; had I known then that Richardson’s staff had no intention of granting an interview, I would’ve grilled him right there with my Flip Cam. Forevermore, Richardson will be in my books as a man who doesn’t keep promises. The first thing I’ll do in California is call up Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s staff and get in the queue…yeah right.

2) Blockgate. So, one of the proudest moments here was uncovering the long trail of lies left by Public Regulation Commissioner Jerome Block Jr—from covering up his criminal history to hiding the fact he reported spending thousands of dollars of public campaign money on a concert that never actually happened. Block and his father were indicted on a slew of criminal charges; I’m just sad that I won’t be here to cover the trial early next year.

3) Medical Cannabis. I’ve taken a lot of heat ever since I started covering medical cannabis, but I also get calls at least a few times a week from patients desperate to  a) find a doctor who will “recommend” it for them, b) find a way to actually score some pot or c) learn what it takes to start up their own growhouse/dispensary. I’ve been able to help where I can with sharing phone numbers, but really there’s not a lot I can do but report. New Mexico Department of Health Secretary Alfredo Vigil has clearly dropped the ball on the state’s medical cannabis program: by rejecting most of the recommendations for approved condititions, by passing overly strict regulations for nonprofit dispensaries, by refusing to approve a second cannabis producer….Most patients are still acquiring pot illegally, which is exactly what the Lynn & Erin Compassionate Use Act was supposed to address. Recently, the only approved nonprofit grower, Santa Fe Institute for Natural Medicine, began telling its clients that DOH would soon approve a second grower. This hasn’t happened and DOH has refused to respond to my inquiries. While San Diego will need me to cover its medical cannabis issues (including a series of busts a few weeks ago), I’m disappointed that DOH won’t get its shit together before I drive out.

4) Radio Theater. So, anyone who knows me knows how obsessed I am with radio theater, particularly of the sci-fi genre. I had a brilliant, BRILLIANT, idea for a detective noir series set in Santa Fe…and I got as far as writing up a treatment but I never put down a single word of script.

A few more short ones.

I’ll regret not sticking out the 2010 election.

I regret never writing a cover on Santa Fe gang violence.

I regret never getting to the bottom of why the Department of Defense is paying Indian Affairs employees in Gallup.

I regret never touring LANL, visiting the O’Keeffe Museum or seeing a film at The Screen.

And I regret never sitting in with Chris Diestler on one of his radio shows.

OK, I’ll end this here. Santa Fe, I’ll miss you. And please, in the words of Christian Bale, swear you won’t forget me.

With Love,
Dave Maass

Staff Writer

September 2007 – October 2009

This time, however, SFINM says the Department of Health is doing something about it.

“The Department of Health is aware of this urgent situation and is working to issue a second producer license,” SFINM’s site tells its clients.

SFR received a screen capture of SFINM’s password-protected site from an anonymous client late Thursday evening. We have not yet received confirmation of this information from the health department. (Update, Oct 2: Acting program coordinator is out until Oct 6, so we probably won’t see movement *that* soon.)

In August, SFINM was completely out of stock and told clients it would resume distribution (with a new strain, “Big Buddha’s Cheese,” no less) in October. Now October’s here and some Santa Fe patients will wait until November.

Citing “overwhelming demand,” SFINM has stopped accepting orders and canceled most of its October delivery schedule:

The Albuquerque delivery scheduled for October 17 has been pushed back to October 31.

The Santa Fe delivery scheduled for October 24 has been pushed back to November 7.

The Alamogordo delivery also scheduled for October 24 is “expected” to arrive on schedule.

Here’s SFINM’s big caveat and finger-point: “Unfortunately there may be many times that all items are out of stock. We are sorry for the inconvenience, but the law limits the amount we can produce.”

In 2007, the New Mexico Legislature passed a law allowing the DOH to set up a medical cannabis program. For the dispensary aspect, DOH decided to go with a non-profit licensing system, limiting each producer to 95 plants.

So far, the DOH has only approved one producer of the 21 producer applications it has received. There are more than 540 card-carrying medical cannabis patients in New Mexico, only a fraction of which are permitted to grow for themselves.

Marjorie Childress at the New Mexico Independent is reporting that the Santa Fe Institute for Natural Medicine has already sold out. Childress cites an unnamed medical cannabis patient who provided an alert from the SFINM Web site:

8/28/09 PRODUCT UPDATE

We are currently sold out of our inventory. Not knowing what members would like, our first crop was 50/50 indica dominant/sativa dominant. And although we are so sorry to run out, we now know that members prefer sativa dominant. We will try and adjust our proportions accordingly so this does not happen again. Also, please keep in mind that it takes 12-18 months for a smooth running ongoing production. This is especially tricky when it is a pilot project and mother nature is involved. We very much appreciate your patience.

Come October, we hope to introduce Big Buddha’s Cheese, Chocolope, and Kandy Kush to the menu. More details will come in September.

Everyone from Tennessee-grower Bernie Ellis to former state medical cannabis program coordinator Melissa Milam have complained that the 95-plant limit the DOH has imposed on nonprofit growers is far too small to handle the statewide patient demand. What compounds the problem is DOH Secretary Dr. Alfredo Vigil could not tell SFR when he thinks a second nonprofit grower/distributor will be granted a license.

To date there are 20 outstanding applications filed by nonprofit entities wishing to offer legal medical cannabis to patients. There are 540 patients registered with the program, only about a fifth are licensed to grow for themselves.

NMI’s glimpse into the private SFINM web site confirms that New Mexico patients are paying street prices for cannabis: “The top grade is $378 an ounce, the middle grade is $336, and the bottom grade…is $182 an ounce.”

Q&A after the jump.

SFR: You treat patients in both California and New Mexico. Can you tell me a litte about the difference between the two state’s laws? Your web site lists a lot of conditions that are eligible for cannabis treatment in California, but not here.

EE: The law came about in a very different way in California. It was actally pushed through by physicians and activists in a very aggressive way and there was a psychiatrist, who unfortunately is deceased, named Dr Tod Mikuriya, and he somehow got a line into this law at the end that basically says marijuana could be recommended–and the word is recommended not prescribed–for anything for which it may be helpful. So, it just made it completely open for anything.

Why is recommended instead of prescribed?

Well, because it is federally illegal and you can’t prescribe an illegal drug. For a physician, it’s not a prescription, it’s not prescribed in California, it’s not prescribed here. All physicians are really doing is writing a recommendation–”so and so has a condition for which cannabis may be helpful.” The difference in the law here in New Mexico is that conditions that are listed eligible have had some scientific research conducted that deems it useful for those things. Of course, this is challenging, because it’s been illegal in this country there is very little scientific research about the use of marijuana. It’s kind of a Catch-22.

It’s not a traditional drug. How does somebody come up with dosage for it, especially considering the different strains?

Most physicians just write the recommendation and, frankly, it’s the people who often work in the dispensaries or the patients themselves who have more knowledge as to what will be useful. What makes it such an interesting herb is that it does have so many different properties and there is so many different strains and people may have to try a few until they find something that works for them. The same thing with the dosing: It’s different for everybody. It’s just like how somebody can take one Vicodin every six hours and it’ll take care of their pain and another person has to take two every four horus for it to take care of their pain, while someone else might take Vicodin and it’s not going to help at all and they need to take something else.

When evaluating a patient, I imagine you don’t just recommend marijuana for everybody. What sort of things determine wheyther you think it would work for a patient?

Frankly, most people who come looking for a recommendation have already tried it and know that it works. i would say that’s probably 95 percent of the people. I would say there are a few, 5 percent, who are about to enter into cancer treatment or who have peripheral neuropathy or somebody who hasn’t used it in 40 years and has heard from a friend that it was helpful. I had somebody in New Mexico who had post traumatic stress syndrome and made the suggestion that they try it because it’s one of the few things I’ve heard from many veterans that works to treat the flashbacks, the insomjnia, the anxiety, the anger management. I did suggest it to this person and he came back and said ‘Thank you so much, it’s the first night’s sleep I’ve had in six years.’ But you know it’s not for everybody and I tell people that. It’s not unlike other meds; you have to try it and see what works.

Why do you think some doctors are resistant to medical cannabis?

We are just programmed to believe this is a bad drug. It’s classified the same way heroin is and probably even heroin has medicinal value, although I think it probably it does more harm. Cannabis, if you do your research, it has been around for 7000-8000 years and has been used medically for centuries. It was in over 30 over the counter medications in this country until the 1940s and it was a completely political move that cannabis became illegal. If a physician goes back and understands that, I think many would have a different attitude.

I’ve received many emails from patients who have trouble finding a doctor willing to recommend it.

In terms of people trying to find a phsyician that will do this or how do you ask your own physician, I always say ‘Bring it up kind of generally.’ So, if you have PTSD and you are talking to your psychiatrist, you know might ask, ‘Have you ever heard of anyone using marijuana to treat PTSD or to treat multiple sclerosis?’ If the physician says, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, I would never even allow my patients to try it,’ then you know they’re not going to be interested in signing the document. If they say, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve quite a few patients who tell me that they do it,’ then you might be able to broach it.

Are you worried at all about the federal government?

I personally am not.

I recently reported that of the the several hundred approved for the program, 26 have been rejected. How is the process working so far?

From my end, I think it works fairly well. I do have patients who call me from all over the state and I screen people that I speak to very carefully and ask whether they’ve done their homework, gone to the web site, seen what is approved because there are a lot of people who know the California laws. If they call and say they have, for example, anxiety, I tell them they will not be approved, so they shouldn’t even bother unless they want to petition the Department of Health to get this on the list.

What conditions would you like to see added to New Mexico’s list of eligible conditions?

I would like to see migraine headaches, Parkinson’s Disease.

The Department of Health rejected Parkinson’s last time someone petitioned for it.

Yeah, that sort of surprised me. But migraines is really a big one. In California, I’ve got a lot of patients for whom it helped tremendously.

It seems like migraines might be something prone to abuse.

Well, again, there are patients who will, and I can tell you in California, that was one of the ones I was in particular pretty rigorous about. I screened for people who had migraines their whole life, they’d been worked up, had the CT scan, been diagnosed, taken Imitrix and they can document that. If I was a neurologist treating them, obviously I would have lal that documentation. Now, if I had a 20-year-old sitting in front of me saying,’Well I get headaches,’ I just say, ‘Uh-huh .What kind of headaches?’ and I do my thing and if they can’t give me the documentation, I won’t give it to them because for all I know they could have a brain tumor.

I would think some doctors would be concerned with the method of taking marijuana, because the Hippocratic Oath-

Oh give me a break.

But, regarding smoking it might be an issue that people are concerned about.

OK, so yes, maybe, except that people are doing very minute amounts. There was actually a study done where patients who smoked marijuana had lower rates of lung cancer than people that didn’t even smoke cigarettes. There is evidence in Israel that show it may actually be a suppresant of cancer. There are alternate ways of using and we would recommend using a vaporizer to people who are going to use it chronically and heavily. To say we ‘do no harm’… we prescribe tons of narcotics, ibuprofren, anti-imflammatories, the list goes on and on and it’s a balance. If you’re saving someone’s life and keeping them from committing suicide and they smoke a hit of marijuana every day, in my heart it’s clear. I don’t feel like I’m doing any harm.

I meet a lot of people who smoke pot chronically and are successful in their careers and personal lives.

I think in my heart of hearts, after doing this, I realized I really do believe it should just be legalized. I know I didn’t feel that when I started, but then I thought, ‘How many people do I know in many generations who come home every single night and have a drink, whether it’s a beer or two beers or a glass of wine or a glass of scotch?’ I would say that a big percentage of our culture does that. And you know what? Having a hit of marijuana is no different and is a lot safer than drinking alcohol and a lot healthier.

Neat, huh? And completely useless in New Mexico, where the name, location and contact details for the state’s only licensed medical cannabis growhouse and dispensary have not been made public by the state Department of Health, which administrates the program. The DOH is currently reviewing 14 more applications from nonprofits that would like to distribute cannabis, and those names, too, are kept confidential. Previously, SFR was able to identify many of them (see “Pot Plans”) due to cross-referencing company filings and because of redaction errors on the DOH’s behalf.

DOH just released six more applications to us. This time DOH staff was not only more diligent in their redaction, but more aggressive as well, blanking out PRC filing dates, county emblems and other indicators. SFR has filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s office as we believe this is a violation of the Inspection of Public Records Act. In the meantime, here are the latest redacted documents.

New Producer App 1

New Producer App 2

New Producer App 3

New Producer App 4

New Producer App 5

New Producer App 6

Click here for earlier applications.

Margaret Schulze, spokesowman for Santa Fe Institute For Natural Medicine, the state’s only licensed grower, warned SFR that it would cease production if the story went to print. She claimed that even though US Attorney General Eric Holder stated that his Department of Justice would not prosecute medical marijuana growers legally formed under state law, such a story would irk the Drug Enforcement Agency into investigating anyway.

New Mexico Independent’s Trip Jennings reports today that Holder addressed the issued during his visit to Albuquerque on Friday:

“For those organizations that are doing so sanctioned by state law, and doing it in a way that is consistent with state law, and given the limited resources that we have, that will not be an emphasis for this administration,” Holder said.

Nevertheless, SFR has received several calls and emails (ranging from “shame on you” to “fuck you!”) from  patients and caregivers claiming that SFINM informed them that it will indeed shut down operations.

Here are pdfs of the applications, heavily redacted by the New Mexico Department of Health in an attempt to protect the organizations’ operations. Some of the pdfs are very large; e-mail davem@sfreporter.com with any problems opening or reading the files.

Santa Fe Institute for Natural Medicine (approved)

NEW Grassroots RX (pending)

NEW Organtica (pending)

NEW Medzen Services Inc (pending)

New Mexico Medical Cannabis (pending)

Veggies Inc (pending)

Unknown (pending)

Unknown (pending)

Now, however, Ellis has concluded (.doc) that the policy makers in the Department of Health are either uninformed or in passive opposition to the program.

Ellis has been growing medical cannabis for more than 20 years, even while serving as a health official with several government entities, including managing a substance abuse research program for the state of New Mexico.

“My personal history seems to be a contradiction in terms,”Ellis tells SFR in a phone interview from his farm in Tennessee. “On the one hand as a public health professional I am well aware that our country is awash in serious substance abuse. On the other hand, as a lifelong cannabis user and provider, I am aware for the most part cannabis provides many more benefits than it has detrimental effects, particularly in the health care arena.”

In 2002, federal law enforcement raided Ellis’ farm in Tennessee. He was sentenced to probation rather than prison time following a large outpouring of public support, Ellis says. The medical marijuana martyr contacted SFR to share his thoughts on New Mexico’s system.

DM: What are you doing these days?

BE: These days I’m trying desperately to stay alive. Seven years after my own raid, my thriving public health epidemiology consulting business has gone by the wayside. Even though I received a sentence of probation–initially four years, later cut in half–any federal conviction pretty much eliminates the opportunity to work in my field. As hard as it is to look at any dance with federal wolves in a positive way, I think it did free me up to focus on two pretty important and I think intertwined issues. One is to work with a number of legislators here in Tennessee who are interested in a state medical marijuana program. The other thing I’m pleased to have been involved in is the battle to return to paper ballots here in Tennessee (as you folks decided to do in 2006). I believe if our politicians actually listened and acted on the will of the people, medical marijuana would be available in every state in the union and it would also be available on demand in pharmacies.

In your email you said you worked on this eight or nine years ago. Take me back.

Back in 2000-2001, I was invited to give testimony to the state legislature there in New Mexico about the legislation to close all drive-up windows for alcohol sales statewide…So, while I was there in Santa Fe, I had a chance to meet one of Gov. Gary Johnson’s staffers to discuss the governor’s interest in establishing a state medical marijuana program. At that time I said the biggest problem with these programs is the limitation that patients cannot begin growing legally until they’re approved to be part of the program. Many patients need access to cannabis as soon as they’re diagnosed with their qualifying condition, not six to eight months later when they can harvest a crop. Gov. Johnson’s staffer asked me to write a position paper on that issue .

The upshot of the paper was to say that a state like New Mexico does need to fund and license and oversee large scale production facilities that would make cannabis available to patients as soon as they need it. Ironically, the day I was planning to send the proposal to Gov. Johnson was the day my farm was raided here in Tennessee. As the task force was ransacking my house, and all of the other nice things they do when they invite themselves onto your property, I actually had a copy of the proposal sitting by my computer. I gave a copy to the task force director and said, ‘You’re welcome to read this and take it with you.’

You’ve been watching how New Mexico has been developing its own medical marijuana program. What did you think when it first passed?

Oh, I was very excited, as were a number of medical marijuana activists around the country, because New Mexico became the first state to include within its legislation the provision to allow the licensing of large scale production facilities. That was a real cause for celebration for a lot of us and obviously I took some personal pride that the law included within it provisions that could be tied directly back to the position paper I had written years earlier.

The other thing I was very pleased about was Gov. Richardson’s willingness to invest considerable political capital in essentially insisting that the law be passed, not allowing the legislature to once again let the law die. Again, when your law passed, there were thousands if not millions of people nationwide who celebrated along with New Mexicans.

You know, we’re getting plenty of people who are moving here because of it.

Right. Well, they’re moving under false pretenses, but they couldn’t live in a more beautiful state than New Mexico.

Well, tell me about these false pretenses. What is your analysis of the program so far?

There are number of things that are frustrating to me and to many others. The first is how passive aggressive it appears from the outside your decision makers have been in developing the regulations. To take 15 months longer than the legislature required for them to issue regulations was certainly a point of frustration and then for them to issue regulations that are essentially wholly unworkable, impractical and not grounded in any experience with cannabis production is very frustrating.

Can you give me an example of why it’s unworkable?

If patients move to New Mexico believing that there’s going to be an immediate source for cannabis, they’re going to be sorely disappointed. Patients who attempt to grow for themselves will find that the limitations on the size of the vegetative plants, the number of flowering plants, the amount of dried material they can possess, all of those requirements will essentially result in most of your patients being in violation of the regulations and thus subject to arrest.

How so?

If you were a patient trying to grow for yourself and you decided to grow outdoors and there’s no requirement against that, and New Mexico’s climate is one of the most ideal places in the country to grow cannabis outdoors, you’re going to end up with one harvest each year. So, you’ve got to produce enough cannabis with that one harvest to last you for the entire year. In my experience, having provided to patients now for about 20 years, there are a large number of patients with chronic conditions who use on average about an ounce of cannabis a week. If your typical New Mexico patient is the same sort of user, they’re legally allowed to possess only six weeks of medicine and anything that they possess above that six ounce limit is in violation of regulations and places them subject to arrest.

I’ve talked about this with some of New Mexico’s caregivers, none of whom are following the law because they all agree with me that you cannot both follow the New Mexico’s regulations and produce either sufficient cannabis or cannabis of sufficient quality to be useful. We tried to calculate what it would take to follow the law and yet also have enough cannabis to meet your needs and its going to take devoting two or three rooms in your house and being essentially in a constant state of trying to get enough medicine out of bonsai-sized plants to make the whole process worth it.

Frankly, people with a cancer diagnosis have more important things to do with their time than become obsessed with cannabis production, devote most of their house to cannabis production and become experts in cannabis production at the same time they’re going through chemotherapy.

Why do you think the New Mexico Department of Health came up with those regulations and limits?

There are only two explanations to me for why the regulations were written that way. One is that they were written by people who have absolutely no experience with growing cannabis or two, they were written by people who have no interest in your program succeeding. If you place these illogical restrictions on plant count, plant size and amount of dry medicine a patient can possess, you essentially set up an unworkable situation from the beginning.

My recommendation had been that patients should be allowed to possess up to 12 [full-size] flowering plants and up to 24 [full-size] vegetative plants and that they be allowed to possess essentially a year’s supply of medicine….Anything less than that and they’re either going to have to hide what they produce from the state or they’re going to have to go back to the illicit market to supplement the small amount they are able to grow legally for themselves.

The Department of Health says that each approved nonprofit producer can serve anywhere between 40 and 90 patients, while sticking to the 95-plant limit. As a grower, what do you make of that estimate?

If I were an approved dispensary out there allowed to grow 95 plants, even busting my hump, I might be able to serve six people total, not 85 or whatever these absurd numbers are…Those six people would be very happy, but I couldn’t produce cannabis for those six, handling all of the cost associated with security and the other costs of producing and save them anything or charge them any price below what they’re going to end up having to pay on the streets anyway.

When I say six patients, I’m saying six who have a chronic condition that they’re living with and I’m estimating about an ounce a week per patient. If I was only serving people who were newly diagnosed cancer patients who were planning only to use cannabis during their chemotherapy, then I could serve many more [patients] than that.

You estimate that 46,000 New Mexicans are eligible for the medical marijuana program under the law. How did you come up with the number?

That’s one place where my epidemiological experience played a role. I called the New Mexico cancer registry, I called the HIV/AIDS coordinators, the multiple sclerosis society, any organization in the state or state agency that actually is responsible for either accurate counting or estimating the incidences and prevalence of those qualifying conditions. That figure was based strictly on the first set of qualifying conditions…so even that 46,000 number I came up with is a very conservative estimate.

The official number of enrolled patients is 361. Why is there such a disparity between that and your estimate? We’re talking several zeroes here.

When I came out there last September to testify at the hearings on the regulations, I stood up and said I imagine of the 46,000 people with qualifying conditions 5,000 to 10,000 of those are currently using cannabis. They just don’t see any value in applying to be part of your program. If it’s not going to make it any easier for them to get cannabis and they’re going to end up violating the regulations anyway and either have to hide pot from the state or go back to the streets to buy it, why bother to go through the process of being approved?

Vigil rejected:

• Alzheimer’s Disease
• post polio syndrome
• Parkinson’s disease
• Three kinds  of arthritis
• Inclusion Body Myositis (chronic muscle inflammation accompanied by muscle weakness)

“There was no scientific evidence that medical cannabis would be an acceptable treatment for people with these conditions,” Dr. Vigil said. “We cannot add those diseases into the program until clinical studies are available that support an appropriate role for medical cannabis.”

Hmmm. Really? Sure, as with most conditions, there’s very little in the way of clinical trials involving medical marijuana (it’s still federally illegal), but NO scientific evidence?  One has to wonder where Vigil gets his information. The panel of doctors on the advisory board seemed to feel there was significant scientific evidence.

One also has to wonder whether Vigil knows how to Google. Search for “medical marijuana, parkinsons” and the first hit is a 2007 study by Standford doctors published in Nature. Another study with similar results was conducted in 2004.

(What this means for the poor soul who testified publicly about his Parkinson’s is that he’s going to have to continue to risk arrest for self-medication.)

Google Alzheimers and medical marijuana, and you hit a January 2009 report from Ohio State University that says marijuana could help prevent Alzheimers. In 2006, the Scripps Research Institute found that it had the potential to slow the process.

However, he did approve “severe chronic pain,” amending the rules to require patients to jump through several new hoops:

“To qualify, patients must have objective proof of severe chronic pain (X-rays, CT scans, MRIs) and receive two recommendations, one from their primary care physician and one  from a specialist consulting on their case. Medical cannabis must be patients’ treatment of last resort because no other medication has provided relief. ”

How an MRI, X-ray or CT scan can document PAIN, is anyone’s guess.

(Read SFR’s cover story, Toke ‘09: Dude, where’s my medical marijuana?)