I-692 has an effect in Bellingham

Whatcom County resident Tony King is sighing with relief following the passage of Initiative 692.

"It relieves that pressure that the police might come through the door," King said. "Now I feel at least by Dec. 3 (1998), I will be legal."

King, 44, suffers from a spinal cord injury that leaves him confined to wheelchair. He has an incomplete paralysis in which he has some feeling in his legs, either numbness or hypersensitivity in other areas and intense pain that disables him from walking. The pain still reverberates throughout his spine and he has liver problems from a 7-year-old injury.

"Every step is like someone is taking a sledgehammer and slamming it against my foot," King said.

To ease the intense pain and nausea associated with numerous medicines, King has used medicinal marijuana for more than two years.

"Physically, I've gone from being in bed four to five days a week to being in bed one day a week," King said.

Before he was injured, King led an active life, spending four years in the Navy and three years stationed in the Army at Fort Lewis. He also spent a couple of years at Boise State University before he moved to the Bellingham area eight years ago.

In August 1991, King worked at a Bellingham sporting goods store. He was unloading freight with two other co-workers when the accident occurred. While the two co-workers, who were supposed to help King unload the truck, were arguing, the truck driver dropped a box of downhill skis intended for the big pre-season sale to the ground.

"I had to do something about it, so I grabbed (the box) and guided it," he said.

It was in King's nature to help people; he was a paramedic in his early 20s in California. "If I did it all over again, I cannot say I would do anything differently," he said.

The impact of the weight ripped his spine apart. Since the accident, King has endured six operations that attempted to seal the tears in his spinal cord that leaked fluid into his body.

"After a couple of operations, it was leaking outside of me and soaking my shirt," King said.

After his last operation in May 1993, he had a stroke. King was prescribed numerous drugs to control the muscle spasms and pain that uncontrollably shook his body. Nausea from the pain medications made it impossible to keep his food in his stomach.

"I had trouble keeping the food down literally to the point where I was eating hardly anything and anything I did eat came right back up," King said.

King and his doctor discussed the problem of nausea and his doctor suggested that he should try Marinol, the FDA-approved alternative to marijuana, to ease his stomach.

However, King's medical insurance provider would not pay for Marinol; it was too expensive.

King had one alternative left which he could afford without medical insurance: marijuana.

King said he had not touched marijuana since his youth, where he only smoked it a few times recreationally. "I was concerned about starting it again and it took me over a year to decide to do it," he said. "When I decided to do it, it was only because I was close to virtually dying."

Investigating his options, King found the Green Cross Patient Co-op in Seattle. He has been with the Green Cross for almost two-and-a-half years.

"Now, I'm glad I did it," King said. "It has changed everything."

Today, King has a healthier appetite, less pain and his muscle spasms have decreased. It has improved his attitude on life in general and his family likes being around him more, he said.

"He is a lot happier to live with," Nancy King, his wife, said. "It makes him in a better mood because the pain is not controlling his life."

King has not noticed unmanageable side effects, such as memory loss, from marijuana use. King already has memory loss from his stroke, so it is difficult to distinguish from the effects of the stroke, he said.

"There are no noticeable side effects," King said. "Having to eat is a side effect, but what I use (marijuana) for is to improve (the) appetite. What some people see as side effects are what I use it for."

King uses one ounce to an ounce-and-a half each month. Smoking marijuana usually works the best for him, but he also makes a "green" butter out of the "shake" of the plant that he can eat.

All of King's medicines are locked away at his home in Custer from his four children and only he and his wife have access. King smokes the medicinal marijuana away from his family, usually in the bathroom or after the children are in bed.

"As far as my children are considered, they are taught the same thing about my cannabis as my methadone: They are all dangerous," King said.

King was not directly involved with groups who fought for I-692. However, he personally supported the medicinal use for other patients as well.

Each month that King visits the Green Cross to retrieve his medicine he sees all the different types of people who are walking through the doors. They are the sick, the dying, the elderly; people who pay taxes or are raising families like himself.

King believes that people like himself will benefit from I-692 because they can continue with their lives as they have been for years.

King admits that there could be some difficulty enforcing the initiative and that the actual distribution of medicinal marijuana will be the most difficult problem to overcome. King hopes legislators will not add regulations that could alter the initiative.

"I wouldn't want them to trim it away to nothing and we don't have any law left to call it a victory," King said. "It should be regulated the same as any other drug."

Legalization of medicinal marijuana may not be the most important thing to everyone else, King said. "But it is something I have to live with everyday."

-- Tiffany White