Florida Aids Patient And His
Doctor Say That Marijuana Kept Him Alive;
Joe Hart Is Plaintiff In Class Action
AIDS PATIENT, DOCTOR SAY MARIJUANA KEPT HIM ALIVE
(Marijuananews note: Joe is a plaintiff in the Class Action Medical
Marijuana suit and a great activist. This is really good
journalism.)
See
Plight Of Class
Action Lawsuit Plaintiff Joe Hart Gives More Proof
That the Suppression of Medical Marijuana Is Murder
and links
From The Miami Herald
http://www.herald.com
HeraldEd@herald.com
April 8, 1999
Story by Marika Lynch, Herald Staff Writer
KEY WEST
Joe Hart’s doctor says he should be dead by now.
Hart, 50, has been HIV positive for 15 years. He gave up on pharmaceutical drugs two
years ago, relying instead on relief from nausea from eight daily puffs on a marijuana
cigarette.
Day by day, Hart wages a battle against AIDS, and when he has the strength, Florida
law.
President and founder of Key West’s underground Medical Cannabis Buyers Club, Hart
disperses marijuana to AIDS patients, for free or at cost, to help ease their symptoms, he
says. He counts 82 people on his membership roster.
The club has had a controversial past. In a 1995 act of defiance, the club opened in a
storefront across the street from the Monroe County courthouse. The club was shut down
swiftly. Hart was arrested after he accepted a package of marijuana from a postal
inspector masquerading as a mailman. Hart was charged with marijuana possession.
Prosecutors dropped the charges in January after a judge ruled they couldn’ t use
the evidence at trial because officers didn’t give Hart enough time to respond when
they knocked on his door to search his home.
Hart was disappointed. He says he wanted to be the test case before the Supreme Court
arguing that he had a "medical necessity" to use the drug.
The laws, he said, are unjust. "I feel like they are calling me a criminal. How
can they say it’s illegal for me to have it when they turn around and give it to
eight people," Hart said, referring to a government program that allows eight people
to use marijuana for medical reasons. "In the Supreme Court building in Washington,
D.C., carved across the edifice big enough to be read a block away, it says, "Equal
Justice for All Under the Law.’ To do anything less would be a double standard."
Last month, for the first time in seven years, Hart has had to be hospitalized for his
illness. On March 13, he went to the Lower Florida Keys Health System hospital on Stock
Island with what he says was a bad case of indigestion. Doctors removed his gall bladder
and appendix. A friend brought him a marijuana cigarette in the hospital that he smoked on
a walk around the grounds to ease his nausea and boost his appetite.
The six-foot former soldier who lives on his veteran’s pension has lost 35 pounds
since then, dropping from 215 pounds to 180. He’s now in Miami’s Veteran’s
Administration Medical Center with a high fever, congestion and swollen lungs. He
hasn’t had a joint since he was admitted Friday.
Hart’s Key West physician Dr. Raymond McKnight said. "I
think it’s a fascinating case. I don’t think I can get any doctor to sit in the
same room with me and [Hart], and guarantee me it’s not helping him. He definitely
couldn’t say this is not working."
(Marijuananews note: Of course, that is not the
government’s "standard of evidence." In order to "protect the
patient" they would arrest him, even if it could be proven that marijuana helps him,
because it hasn’t been double-blind tested on others. If that doesn’t make any
sense to you, you will never get a grant from NIDA.)
Supported