Essie DeBonet was 61 years old when she attended the New Mexico House Agriculture and Water Resources Committee in 2006, but she appeared to be much older. Frail and unsteady, DeBonet was clearly gravely ill.

The 18-year AIDS patient had come to the Roundhouse desperate for help. She was taking four medications to combat her disease, and another nine medications to deal with the side effects of the AIDS drugs, she told lawmakers. Yet, the only thing that helped her eat, she told committee members, was medical marijuana.

"My life has become degrees of nausea," she said. She was one of several patents suffering from a wide array of illnesses to make the same claim. We are taking our prescription medication, but it doesn't help, they all said. The only thing that allows us to keep food down is medical marijuana.

But the committee had made up its mind. Speaker Ben Lujan had sent the bill there to die, and they dutifully killed it.

It was at that point DeBonet let out a mournful wail that I'll never forget. "Why are you trying to kill us?" she asked committee members as they hustled to collect their things and get out of the room.

Covering the Legislature can often make one angry, or frustrated or disappointed or even heart-broken - such as the committee hearing on the Baby Brianna law that was filled with grieving parents clutching photos of children who had been brutally murdered. But nothing ever had quite the same effect on me as the desperate pleadings of a dying woman being ignored.


I thought about Essie last week as I edited Sunday's front-page story about a medical marijuana grower in T or C who was seeking permission to expand into Doña Ana County. And, I thought about all those dire warnings as to what would happen if the state ever did allow for medical marijuana (which it did the next year.)

There were two lines of "expert" witnesses when the bill was being debated - one from the medical community, the other from the law enforcement community.

Every bit of medical testimony was in favor of the bill. One of the strongest supporters was Dr. Steve Komadina, a Republican senator and physician who, at the time, was the only medical doctor in the Legislature.

"There's more control with this than when I write a prescription for Tylenol with codeine," Komadina said. "We know prescription drugs are abused just as much as illegal drugs."

Opponents of the bill didn't even bother arguing the medical aspects. Instead, they held fast to the slippery-slope argument, that admitting to any medicinal benefits at all to the drug will "send the wrong message" to our kids and ultimately turn the entire state into an Amsterdam hash den.

Those warnings have proved to be false.

The New Mexico Substance Abuse Epidemiology Profile, produced in 2011 by the Department of Health, found that there was a slight increase in marijuana use by N.M. high school students from 2007 to 2009, but "the difference is not statistically significant."

Last November, voters in Colorado and Washington state passed new laws decriminalizing marijuana.

And this past legislative session, a bill that would have eliminated the potential for jail time for possession of up to 8 ounces of marijuana passed the House 37-33 in the closing week of the session - not enough time to be taken up by the Senate. Rep. Terry McMillan of Las Cruces, who like Komadina before him is now the only medical doctor serving in the House, was one of two Republicans to vote for the bill.

It was wrong to deny medication to the gravely ill based on irrational fears. It is also wrong, I believe, to incarcerate users. Change may slow, but it is coming.
