Marijuana Policy Project

Jefferey Burnside wants to smoke marijuana legally in New York state.

Now 43, Burnside, who grew up in Wells Bridge, is HIV-positive. About 13 years ago, he said, he had a careless sexual encounter in Denver in which he was infected, and since then, he's faced a series of medical challenges.

"I was stupid and I'm paying for it," he says.

He lives with persistent abdominal pain, which is aggravated by pharmaceutical drugs prescribed for his condition, often a precursor to AIDS, he says.

"When I take the drugs they want me to, it can get pretty bad," he says, sitting on the couch in his second-story apartment in Sidney. "A couple of times I woke up in agony. It felt like I was passing a kidney stone."

"When he was taking the drugs, it made him anemic," says his wife of four years, Monica.

One day, about two years ago, the Burnsides were shopping in Cooperstown when Jefferey fell asleep in their van, she says.

"That's not like him at all, and when I looked at his hands, all yellowish, I got scared," she says.

She took her husband to Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital, where she was told his liver had shut down and that he was acutely anemic.

"They checked every possible reason why I was like that until they were sure it was the drugs I was taking," says Jefferey.

Since then, he has sworn off pharmaceuticals but has tried to medicate himself with marijuana, he says, showing a medical marijuana permit from the state of New Mexico.

New Mexico is one of 14 states that have legalized marijuana for pain management and other medical uses, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML.

Last year, Burnside moved to Santa Fe to enroll in the state's program, but while he was in New Mexico his apartment was burglarized.

"They stole my bike, almost everything of value," he says. "I came back to New York in May of '08."

Since he's returned to his home state, he's tried to buy marijuana in the Sidney area, but the price is high and the availability uncertain, he says.

"Out there, it was $50 an ounce. Here, it's more like $30 an eighth ounce," he says.

And on a Supplemental Security Income of $700 a month, his pain management program is so expensive in New York state that he can barely afford to live.

"I don't see why they don't legalize it here; and I can't understand why it's legal in one state and not another," he says.

According to New York Assemblyman Bill Magee, D-Nelson, the state Assembly has twice passed bills that would allow patients to grow and possess marijuana under strict controls, but the state Senate has refused to vote on a companion bill.

"The vote in the Assembly was 95-to-52 in 2007 and 85-to-52 in 2008, and I voted for it," Magee said Jan. 21.

Jeff Bishop, spokesman for state Sen. James Seward, R-Milford, said Seward does not favor legalizing medical marijuana because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not approve its use.

"If the FDA was for it and it would be strictly controlled," Seward might vote to legalize possessing, but not growing, medical marijuana, Bishop said.

Seward believes it would be harder to control marijuana use if people were allowed to grow it, Bishop said.

Burnside says some patients prefer to grow their own so they can assure that it's organic, though he'd settle for any improvement in the current law.

In New York state, possession of small amounts of marijuana on a first or second offense is a violation. Possession of up to a pound is punishable by up to four years in prison, and possession of larger amounts can bring up to 15 years in prison.

Marijuana, which has been cultivated for thousands of years, was legal in much of the United States until the 1930s, according to the online magazine Salon.

In 1930, the federal Bureau of Narcotics, a new federal division of the Treasury Department, was formed and Harry J. Anslinger was named its director.

Anslinger lobbied against marijuana, and in response, in 1937 Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act, effectively outlawing the substance at the federal level.

In 1970, Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act, and classified marijuana in Schedule I — the most serious category of drugs — along with heroin.

Burnside says that he, and everyone else he's ever met who's used marijuana, believes this act was rooted in politics, not medical fact.

"Marijuana is nowhere near as dangerous as alcohol," he says, noting that alcohol has remained legal.

The drug's effect on human health continues to be debated.

Karen Huxtable, a spokeswoman for Bassett Healthcare, said Bassett has a policy of not commenting on medical marijuana.

On its website, the FDA notes that Dr. Robert Meyer, its director of drug evaluation, testified before Congress on marijuana in 2004, saying, "FDA has not approved marijuana for medical use in the United States. Despite its status as an unapproved new drug, there has been considerable interest in its use for the treatment of a number of conditions, including glaucoma, AIDS wasting, neuropathic pain, treatment of spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis, and chemotherapy-induced nausea.

"Under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) Congress listed marijuana in Schedule I," Meyer's testimony continued. "Schedule I substances have a very high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use in the United States, and lack accepted safety data for use under medical supervision.''

NORML addresses the alleged medical benefits of marijuana at length, stating, in part: "Despite the ongoing political debate regarding the legality of medicinal marijuana, clinical investigations of the therapeutic use of cannabinoids are now more prevalent than at any time in history. A search of the National Library of Medicine's PubMed website quantifies this fact.

"While much of the renewed interest in cannabinoid therapeutics is a result of the discovery of the endocannabinoid regulatory system, some of this increased attention is also due to the growing body of testimonials from medicinal cannabis patients and their physicians," the NORML statement continued. "Predictably, because of the U.S. government's strong public policy stance against any use of cannabis, the bulk of this modern cannabinoid research is taking place outside the United States.''

Magee said he was uncertain whether state government would reconsider the legalization of marijuana this year.