I'll be posting a comprehensive, original piece on John Ray Wilson tomorrow with quotes from wilson's attorney, local MS patients and an overview of the case.

Here's Ken's 11/2008 letter.

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Trenton, New Jersey  08625-0080

 November 2008  

Re: Request for Compassionate Prosecutorial Discretion In the matter of John R. Wilson  

Dear General Milgram: 

John Wilson suffers from multiple sclerosis (MS).  MS is a terrible disease that strikes otherwise healthy young adults in their 20’s and 30’s.  The progressive course of this disease leads patients first to a wheelchair and eventually to a bed where they often choke to death on their own secretions or die of pneumonia. 

There is no cure.  Having MS sentences you to being racked with incessant, dreadful pain and spasms that traditional medications often cannot relieve, as your body slowly deteriorates.  

  John has no health insurance.  In a desperate attempt to deal with his condition, John resorted to “Bee Sting Therapy.”  This folk remedy involves allowing live bees to sting the patient.  As you can imagine, it is incredibly painful.  Then John heard talk show host Montel Williams discuss his use of medical marijuana.  Montel has MS, and he uses marijuana every day.

  Montel does have health insurance and he has access to the most advanced medical treatment in the world.  Montel said that he tried every drug imaginable to deal with the symptoms of MS, but no drug was as effective and had fewer side effects than marijuana.  (Montel actually testified to this in Trenton at the New Jersey Senate Health Committee in June 2006.)  When John heard how marijuana helped Montel, he decided to try it for himself, to treat his MS.   

John found that by using marijuana he was able to control the symptoms of MS and actually stop the progression of the disease.  Recently, John started growing marijuana plants to keep his costs down and also to ensure that his medicine was not contaminated.  He had a total of 17 marijuana plants but only one plant had therapeutically useful buds on it.  Nevertheless, when the police found his outdoor garden and arrested him, they charged him with “maintaining a CDS production facility, manufacturing CDS and possessing CDS.”  John faces a sentence of many years in state prison. 

The National MS Society recently confirmed in an Expert Opinion Paper that standard therapies often provide inadequate relief for the symptoms of MS and that marijuana helps with MS symptoms such as pain and spasticity and could limit disease progression.*   This is consistent with decades of medical studies proving the benefit of marijuana to aid those afflicted with a variety of diseases.   The US Department of Justice Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young, after two years of hearings on medical marijuana, decided, on September 6, 1988:

“The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and during so with safety under medical supervision.  It would be unreasoning, arbitrary and capricious for DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefit of this substance in light of the evidence in this record...Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.”** 

 The science supporting medical marijuana is too compelling to deny, as I’m sure you will agree if you review the references I have provided, below.  I can supply additional documentation as well as lists of professional medical organizations supporting the use of therapeutic marijuana should you desire more information. It should be noted that John Wilson is barely able to make a living working from his home selling cosmetics on eBay.  To him and others like him, the fact that an inexpensive herb like marijuana can relieve the horrible pain and spasticity caused by MS is a blessing. 

 The fact that marijuana has been shown to actually arrest the progression of the disease is a compelling reason to employ it therapeutically. 

Marijuana can be authorized by licensed physicians for patients like John Wilson in twelve states but not yet in New Jersey.  Fortunately we have the New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act (S119/A804) in our legislature to do just that.  Notably, one of the initial sponsors of this bill was Senator Nick Scutari, the Union County Prosecutor.  These bills are gaining in bipartisan sponsorship and reflect the results of a recent survey that showed 86% of New Jersey residents approve of medical marijuana for those suffering from afflictions that marijuana helps. 

 In reality, the only ones who need to approve are the doctors and their patients who actually suffer and desperately need the relief.    Because of his desperate need for relief, John grew marijuana plants at home for his own medical use.  On August 18, 2008 he was arrested in Somerset County for this.  It is abundantly clear that all John was doing was providing himself with desperately needed medication.   

    A founding member of the Coalition for Medical Marijuana New Jersey, Inc., Jim Miller, on the advice of a doctor, treated his own wife's MS with medical marijuana for several years until her untimely death.  As many people do, he only became aware of the benefit of marijuana for MS sufferers from a doctor.  Jim is intimately aware that marijuana was the only medication that provided his wife with any measure of relief.  On more than one occasion, he brought his wife on a gurney to the offices of various legislators, informed them that she used marijuana, and challenged them to arrest her. None did.  

 Jim’s wife passed away; John Wilson still suffers. 

The question is what are you going to do when confronted with a suffering person grasping for one item that can ease their suffering.  

 So we ask that you Ms. Milgramtry to imagine the patient right there in from of you.  Are you going to ignore his pain and helplessness by acting to unnecessarily inflict a criminal penalty on him?  Until the law is changed, desperate patients in New Jersey, like John, faced with the grim prognosis of MS and the hope that marijuana offers, have no choice but to break the law.  It is a terrible and absurd choice. 

I don’t know if you ever saw a patient suffer and die from MS, but I have in my 32 years as a registered nurse (RN).  It’s not a pretty sight. This matter cries out for the exercise of compassion.  It is not a matter of criminal prosecution but of patient persecution.  John is not a gang member inflicting pain on innocent residents, a street thug or a white collar criminal defrauding thousands of people of their savings.  You well know we have ample real criminals in this State.  Does this State wish to spend precious limited resources on prosecuting patients? 

I submit that it would be entirely proper for you to issue a directive that bona fide patients not be prosecuted for using medical marijuana.  It is not too difficult to identify patients as opposed to casual users. They are the desperately sick people under a doctor’s care and using marijuana because either nothing else provides any relief or they cannot afford conventional medications because they lack medical insurance.  

 Are there not a multitude of better uses for your staff time and budget to benefit the people of New Jersey than inflicting greater suffering on John Wilson?  Would the State not be better served if all prosecutors stopped wasting public resources prosecuting patients?  Moreover, is it even justice to prosecute people like John Wilson for trying to ease their pain from a horrible disease, especially when such treatment causes no harm to any innocent persons?  The “crime” in patient cases is a technical statutory violation that our legislature is working on changing.  Prosecuting patients is not being tough on crime; it is being heartless on patients. 

 I am confident that if New Jersey residents could vote on this directly, the law would not be allowed to inflict additional suffering on patients afflicted with incurable diseases. Governor Corzine told us that he will sign the Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act into law when the state legislature passes it. How tragic would it be for John to suffer and probably die in prison when the dawn of an enlightened law is upon us.   

Right now, you, Ms. Milgram have the power to decline to prosecute the case against John Wilson for humanitarian reasons.  What the law incorrectly classifies as crime in this case is more properly viewed as medical treatment.  John Wilson, and the many thousands like him in our state are no threat to society.  Sadly, nature has already sentenced people like John to an untimely and painful death.  Is it necessary to persecute him at this time and inflict more suffering on him?  

 Is it justice to exercise the great power of the State to inflict man-made suffering on a person already condemned to MS and who harmed no one in trying to ease his pain? 

 You recently told the graduates of Georgian Court University that we are judged by our “kindness, integrity and justice.”   I'm sure you agree that it is a travesty for any society living by those rules, and asserting that it is civilized, to prosecute any seriously ill patient who uses marijuana to relieve his suffering. 

 Medical marijuana will ultimately be approved in this state, perhaps within a year.  It is truly shameful that so many patients continue to suffer needlessly in the meantime. John Wilson will suffer and perhaps die because of MS. 

Please do not impose more misery on him than nature has already.  In the end, this is as much about you as it is about John.  You, Ms. Milgram, will always remember whether you chose a compassionate path of true justice in this case or blind adherence to a pointless law.  Ultimately, we are judged not by words--however glorious--nor by our good intentions, but by our actions.  True justice in this case accords with what common human decency compels.  Both cry out to spare needless suffering for John Wilson and for all medical marijuana patients.    

Sincerely yours, Ken Wolski, RN, MPA
Executive Director
Coalition for Medical Marijuana New Jersey, Inc. www.cmmnj.org
609.394.2137
ohamkrw@aol.com 

The Coalition for Medical Marijuana New Jersey, Inc. (CMMNJ) is an all-volunteer, non-profit educational organization whose mission is to educate the public about the benefits of medical marijuana (cannabinoids).  We are a 501 (c)(3) public charity.  For more information, visit our website at: www.cmmnj.org   

Hon. Anne MilgramNovember 1, 2008P.5 

* “Recommendations Regarding the Use of Cannabis in Multiple Sclerosis,” Expert Opinion Paper, National Clinical Advisory Board of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, 2008.

http://www.nationalmssociety.org/about-multiple-sclerosis/treatments/complementary--alternative-medicine/marijuana/download.aspx?id=1023

 ** Randall, R.C., Ed., Marijuana, Medicine & the Law Volume II, Washington, D.C.: Galen Press, 1989, pp. 440-445.  See also: “Multiple Sclerosis and Medical Cannabis,” Americans for Safe Access, 2008. http://www.safeaccessnow.org/article.php?id=4558  

“Emerging Clinical Applications for Cannabis & Cannabinoids, A Review of the Recent Scientific Literature, 2000 — 2008,” Paul Armentano, 2008.  http://www.norml.org//index.cfm?Group_ID=7121