Photos by Laura Segall Tom, 47, smokes a joint at the Tucson Hemp Clinic to ease the effects of AIDS.

If proponents of medical marijuana get their way this year, lighting up to help ease the pain of illness may no longer be a felony in Arizona. Until then, we take you inside the state’s only medical marijuana clinic.

The man with AIDS explains the procedure to make his medicine: something to do with butane and a long tube. I can’t hear him all that well beneath the cacophony of voices punctuated by sporadic guitar riffs and repeated outbursts by a retired librarian who reminds people in the room to say “Bingo!” for reasons I don’t understand.


Or maybe I can’t follow the conversation because of the thickness of the marijuana smoke that’s filling the cramped casita.

The man with AIDS says he uses the chemical to reduce an ounce of cheap Mexican brick weed into a tablespoon of oil, the consistency and color of maple syrup, that he can smoke for two weeks. He fondles the clear glass pipe between his fingers, occasionally heating the syrup in its bell, in between hits from a joint that is passed to him by the pale, thin, prematurely aged man with a cane to his right.

“I’ve taken every AIDS drug there has been,” says Tom, 47, who was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1985 and with AIDS in 1991. Tom is jovial by nature: a flamboyant cosmetologist who sometimes shows up to rock concerts, gay-pride parades and other events in a three-piece suit painted all over with fluorescent green marijuana leaves.

But he gets serious when he talks about his disease. Many of his friends who got sick at the same time he did are dead. That takes a toll on your psyche, he says, even as the virus batters your body. Tom says the AIDS drugs have left him with neuropathy that wakes him up at night with throbbing hands and feet. “The only thing that allows me to be a hairdresser, play guitar, have a normal range of motion is marijuana,” he says. 

Tom is surrounded by nearly 20 men and women with similar testimonials who are crammed onto a small futon and couch or standing around in the little room, surrounded by books and posters decrying the war on drugs, the window draped with a colorful medical marijuana flag. Among the group is a 54-year-old former body builder who says he was poisoned and had painful complications from a surgical incision when doctors cut open his torso to operate; a 38-year-old man with a cane who has osteoarthritis and degenerative disc disease; a retired female librarian with glaucoma; a middle-aged man with arachnoiditis, a debilitating condition that causes severe pain and neurological problems (he is the one playing guitar); and many others with back problems, neuropathy and conditions they’d rather not describe. They say marijuana eases their pain, calms their nerves and has allowed them to reduce or forgo opiate painkillers and other pharmaceuticals.

Floating among the patients is their dealer and hostess: a short, pixie-like, 62-year-old woman we’ll call Linda, who flutters around wearing a medical marijuana T-shirt and a fanny pack that states, “The government lies.” With a thick, unlit joint clutched between her tanned, bony fingers, she walks around the room taking marijuana orders.

WELCOME TO THE TUCSON HEMP CLINIC – Arizona’s only medical marijuana clinic, an underground co-op that has been serving the marijuana needs of sick people from across the state for more than a decade. On the first Saturday of every month, the patients gather in this tiny casita just off Speedway Boulevard to refresh their marijuana supply, trade tips for making “edibles” or other methods of consuming cannabis and share joints, companionship and some good laughs – and frankly, most of these people look as if they could use all three.

Linda says the clinic started in the late 1990s with an eccentric man who wore a white linen suit and rode around Tucson on his bicycle delivering pot to patients too sick to leave their homes. After he died of liver failure, Linda took over in 2003. She says the clinic now has more than 50 regular patients, including several people from the Phoenix-metro region.

Here’s how it works: Linda manages the co-op with help from Jon, a patient who began smoking marijuana after he was involved in a car accident a decade ago. Linda procures the marijuana from other dealers, stores it in her home and distributes it to patients. She says she won’t sell to people who aren’t sick, but believes most serious medical and mental problems can be helped by pot. (I was never offered a hit when the patients were smoking.) Sometimes, she gives it away for free. Jon helps maintain medical records and keeps in touch with the patients. Some patients show up in wheelchairs or with walkers or canes. But if someone’s malady is not obvious, such as with HIV or cancer, they demand medical records up front “for our own safety,” Linda explains. They also keep doctors’ notes. If Linda is ever busted, she believes she can use the medical records as a defense. (Because Linda could be busted, her name has been changed for this story. Others are being identified by only their first names.)

Each patient gets his or her own laminated medical marijuana photo identification card that explains the marijuana is for medical use and requests compassion from law enforcement – just in case. But make no mistake: What they are doing is illegal in Arizona. Sargeant Diana Lopez, a Tucson Police spokeswoman, says a patient who buys marijuana from the clinic is subject to arrest and prosecution just like anyone else: “There is no leniency being given in reference to medical marijuana,” she says.

 Jon says the co-op is about “a group of ill patients working together to help each other find safe medicine.” Now 39, Jon was in a car accident in Phoenix 10 years ago that left him with a broken pelvis, lacerated liver, bruised heart, punctured lung and head injuries. He was prescribed Vicodin, which was dangerous for his already-damaged liver. Friends recommended marijuana, but he was reluctant – until his mom and dad said they thought it was a good idea. His dad was an orthopedic surgeon; his mom was a critical care nurse. The marijuana allowed him to take less of his prescription drugs and focus on his recovery.

Tucson Hemp Clinic patient Don, 56, takes a break from playing guitar to smoke pot from a pipe. Don developed arachnoiditis and says he’s in constant pain after an on-the-job injury in 1997.

Now, Jon has a prescription for Marinol – a legal, synthetic version of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), one of the active and most potent chemicals in marijuana – but says it doesn’t work for him. It knocks him out; he can’t take it when he’s nauseous; it takes too long to take effect; and it’s expensive ($1,300 a month). “We should have the freedom to seek out the treatments that help us,” Jon says.

I visit the Tucson Hemp Clinic in December 2009 as the petition drive to get an Arizona medical marijuana initiative on the 2010 ballot is well under way. If it makes the November ballot this year (which seems likely) and passes, most of the clients of the Tucson Hemp Clinic and seriously ill patients throughout the Valley would qualify to buy marijuana legally from state-regulated dispensaries that would open throughout Phoenix and across the state. Medical marijuana is already legal in 14 other states, including Arizona’s neighbors, California, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada. But here in Arizona, possession of any amount of marijuana can be prosecuted as a felony. Even a small amount a dope could land someone who is sick in prison for up to 18 months – one of the toughest penalties for possession of a small quantity of marijuana in the nation.

It doesn’t matter how sick you are.

It doesn’t matter if marijuana relieves your symptoms.

It doesn’t matter that studies and testimonials indicate marijuana has medical benefits.

And it doesn’t matter that 65 percent of Arizonans voted to legalize medical marijuana in 1996, the same year California voters did, and by a higher percentage. The 1996 law never went into effect. After it was passed, the Arizona Legislature gutted it by tying it to federal law. Voters turned around in 1998 and rejected the Legislature’s move, essentially re-affirming the 1996 vote. But the law contained a minor drafting mistake that kept it from being enforceable. It required a doctor’s “prescription” for medical pot. The law should have said a doctor’s “recommendation” instead, like this year’s proposed initiative does. (The reason: Marijuana is categorized by the federal government as a Schedule 1 drug, along with heroin, and it’s more strictly regulated than methamphetamine or cocaine; the feds say marijuana has no legitimate medical use, so doctors are barred from prescribing it.)

In 2002, Arizona voters got a chance to vote on medical marijuana again, but the ballot item was rejected. The measure was extreme: It would have decriminalized marijuana entirely, making possession by anyone the equivalent of a traffic violation, and required the Arizona Department of Public Safety to give pot to medical patients for free.

Supporters of this year’s medical marijuana initiative say they have learned a lot from past mistakes – and from problems that have cropped up over the past decade in states like California, where regulations are lax.

Dr. Sue Sisley, a Scottsdale physician and assistant professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix, has been urging her colleagues at the Arizona Medical Association to take a stand in favor of the medical marijuana initiative.

Sisley talks about a string of tragic cases where she watched as her terminally-ill cancer patients wasted away, malnourished during chemotherapy, or were so drugged up on opiates and other pharmaceuticals that they missed out on their final moments with their loved ones. A few patients’ families took the risk and bought marijuana illegally – and they say it brought them relief that no FDA-approved pharmaceutical could provide. Sisley is now working to get permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration to test marijuana for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans. She says the current laws are hypocritical: Doctors are allowed by the federal government to prescribe massive amounts of opiates and even methamphetamine and cocaine – but not marijuana.