Lee lives in upstate Vermont. He is an AIDS patient who relies on medical marijuana, however he does so in constant fear as the federal government could take away his subsidized housing if he were to register in the state medical marijuana program.

I was the heckler. When the deputy drug czar was here. They were saying there was no body of evidence saying that medical marijuana was effective and I couldn’t take listening to her any longer so I stood up and said “Bullshit”. I refused to leave until she first left the podium. Interestingly enough, they brought a guard in to remove me from the auditorium and the guard refused to remove me from the auditorium because his mom had died of cancer three or four months before and he agreed with everything I was saying. He said I was the tax payer in the state and that she was the one that should leave and not me. I was quite pleased needless to say.

Medical marijuana is a big issue. Unfortunately, the way the state of Vermont did this, it remains illegal under Vermont law for people with medical conditions to use medical marijuana, or therapeutic cannabis, because they didn’t want to go against federal law, but they made it a $5 fine. It becomes unhandy for the police to come after someone for such a small offense.

It puts people like me in a hard position though. This is a federally subsidized house. I went through the USDA Rural Development Program for people with low income and the FHA. I had to sign paperwork that said I would not cultivate, manufacture, sell, procure, or use any controlled substances. So I could lose my housing if I registered and took part of this program.

"I was the heckler."

I have been here since June, but even before that, my apartment was subsidized by Section 8 and HUD says you can lose benefits as well. It is heavy handed oversight of drug policy and drug policy should be handled as a medical issue, not a legal issue, at least that is my opinion as a clinical psychologist.

Q: So why Section 8?

I have become disabled from HIV. I have actually had full-blown AIDS for 10 years now. I worked with retarded adults in the community before that and there is not a lot of income in that field. Now my income is $1,200 a month, which is actually much better than people working minimum wage jobs, but it is still considered low-income. I am on SSDI.

My mother’s family is from around here. I moved up here about 30 years ago on a fluke. Someone from my home town came up to buy a house and we helped put on a new roof for the winter and I just never left.

Q: How does marijuana help you?

The medications people take for HIV are chemotherapy. People become very, very nauseas and can’t eat while they are taking these medications. Right now, I am tolerating my combination pretty well, so that doesn’t apply to me. But I have chronic depression and one of the side effects is that I become anorexic. I just stop eating. Without marijuana I tend to lose a lot of weight. Weight loss is not good, especially if you are living with HIV. Another problem caused by the drugs is peripheral neuropathy so I am in a great deal of pain all the time. The pain is manageable except when I go to bed at night when my mind is not on other things. If I don’t smoke before I go to bed at night I can’t sleep. Again, sleep is important because I need to stay in as best health as I can.

I have a few friends that use it for nausea and appetite stimulation. Other than myself, I can’t think of many people using it for pain. People say there are plenty of prescriptions for pain, but those are highly addictive, opiate based, and I was a heroin addict as a teenager and I have no desire to go back to using opiates again. Marijuana seems to be a much less intrusive to my lifestyle way of managing pain.

I told my doctor from day one, 20 years ago when I was first seen for HIV that I had no interest in pain management for that reason [past addiction difficulties] and so whenever we talk about pain we talk about can I tough it out and the only way I can is with Marinol or marijuana. The problem with Marinol is that you get too stoned from it- you can’t function properly on it. But with marijuana you can take a few puffs and then put it down until you need it again so you can avoid a major disruption in your ability to function in society.

Q: Can you split the Marinol pill in half?

No, it is a capsule. But even so, the smallest dosage- it doesn’t do the trick. I also seem to develop a tolerance to it. Within six months of starting the therapy I was up to the highest dose possible, taking it four times a day. I couldn’t function, I couldn’t walk without falling down. It’s awful to be wandering around in that kind of a fog all of the time. But with marijuana you can take a couple of puffs and put it down.

Q: Why start with heroin?

I was a gay man. I grew up in a gay resort town with a father who these days would be considered abusive, but in those days he was a “strict disciplinarian.” My twin brother and I ran away from home when we were 14 and lived on the streets of New York. We became addicted on the streets. By about the time we were almost 16 years old we met an older gentleman who was a doctor who took us in and helped us get clean. We have both been clean ever since. But my twin passed away in 1989 from complications of AIDS. We believe he became infected long before I did. Probably when he went out to Denver to live in 1978. We think I got infected in 1981. It has really been the use of marijuana in combination with my other medicines that have kept me going for so long. I am healthy, but without it, I can see myself going downhill pretty quickly.

Q: Why don’t you just register with the state?

I can’t, I’ll lose the house. That’s for one thing, but I also find the program kind of onerous. You have to pay a $100 fee to get connected and then you have to register with the Department of Health that will verify with your doctor that you have an approved condition and then the Department of Public Safety has to get involved- they come I believe to tell the local police that I am a quasi-legal user of marijuana. I just think it is a lot of information that people don’t need to know about me, especially given the stigma attached to living with HIV. Although I am pretty open about being infected- I am the Co-Chair of the Vermont People With AIDS Coalition.

I don’t just think about this in terms of me. I think about it in terms of all the other people out there that need these things. The thing I find really odd is that they didn’t even make some of the conditions people have that would benefit from medical marijuana even recognized. I believe it is cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, and AIDS and that’s it. They don’t talk about glaucoma or any of the other… I have a friend who has Parkinson’s who believes his tremors are decreased when he uses medical marijuana. There are all of these pieces that were ignored when they passed this legislation. They are scared to death that they will have people cultivating marijuana in their backyards and selling it. So they force us to go through a black market with is illegal.

I know of grandmothers and grandfathers that have cancer in this state that are sending their grandchildren to the local drug dealers to get their marijuana and I don’t think that is the best way to go. I wouldn’t want to send my daughter out to the local heroin dealer to get some pot.

Really the reason they keep these drugs illegal is because it is a multi-billion dollar industry to regulate drug use.

Q: How did you realize marijuana could be helpful?

There was a lot of literature on it. One of the drugs they use for appetite stimulation- at one point I was down to 125 pounds and at six feet that is pretty thin- they put me on a drug called which didn’t seem to help me want to eat, but marijuana helped me want to eat. My doctors knew this would help- there is a lot of quiet discussion going on that people don’t know about. My nurse practitioner also suggested that I should just smoke a joint once in a while. Technically, they can’t say that to me, but they do on occasion when they know it won’t go any further.

My dad is living with Cancer now and my dad uses medical marijuana at my insistence because he was losing a lot of weight and having difficulty with the chemotherapy. My dad is a retired cop living in Maine. He spent the better part of my teenage years tearing up people’s pot gardens and fighting the War on Drugs. But he realized marijuana is probably the only way he will survive long enough to see his grandchildren.

Q: Has he changed his views?

He still feels unless there is a medical need for it, it should be controlled. By the same token, Maine was very good about getting their medical marijuana law passed and when it became legal I started talking to him about using, but only after. He is highly ethical, he would never break the law; he is very much a law-abiding citizen.