Beliefs Can Change in a Puff of Smoke

He understands that to all but his closest friends, he might well be considered a “right-wing kook” who has gone over the edge. But tragedy, like politics, can make strange bedfellows. And yes, it really is Lyn Nofziger stumping these days for the medical use of marijuana.

Nofziger, 76, spent most his public life on the inside of Republican political circles; a conservative tough guy who served on the staff of former President Richard Nixon and as political director for former President Ronald Reagan.

But it is his private life that defines him these days, forcing him to part company with his conservative cronies and join a campaign led by those he might once have derisively dismissed as “potheads.”

And it wasn’t politics that Nofziger was thinking of last week, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal law prohibits the medical use of marijuana. It was the torturous death of his oldest daughter 11 years ago, and the fact that her only respite from the pain of cancer was delivered by a puff of marijuana smoke.

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It is a hazard of living in the real world, this clash between ideology and reality, often prompted by personal tragedy.

An ardent pro-lifer learns her teenage daughter was raped and is pregnant, and suddenly abortion seems the lesser of two evils. An anti-death penalty activist loses his family to a killer and begins to understand the thirst for vengeance. A political conservative watches his daughter wrestle with the pain of terminal cancer, and begs her friends to score a bag of weed.

“I recognize that my position is an aberration, in a way; that you wouldn’t expect someone of my political persuasion to advocate the use of marijuana,” says Nofziger, who works today as a political consultant with the Carmen Group in Washington, D.C.

“But this is something that transcends left wing and right wing. When you look at the evidence, and you see people being helped--people who have glaucoma and multiple sclerosis and cancer and AIDS--and you know from personal experience that marijuana can be a tremendous help, it is not a hard call to make.”

Before his daughter took ill, Nofziger says, “I might have looked askance” at the notion of marijuana use. He was Reagan’s political director then, in an administration that coined the “Just Say No” response to illegal drugs.

Then his 38-year-old daughter was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. “We tried everything the doctors wanted,” he recalled. Nothing helped, not even Marinol, the legally available form of marijuana’s ingredients in a pill. Finally, her pain was so overpowering, “she couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep . . . she was just in near-constant pain.

“So we said to her friends, ‘Can you get her some marijuana?’ They were in that generation that knew a lot more about things like that than we did. And they were able to get her some.”

So the right-hand man of a law-and-order president became a sort of outlaw, on the fringe of a fledgling movement that would gain steam over the coming decade. Today, nine states, including California, have legalized the use of marijuana for some medical conditions, although those provisions are now in jeopardy because of last week’s Supreme Court ruling. Back in 1990 when Nofziger’s daughter was ill, there was simply no legal way to get the drug.

“I remember they got some and gave it to a friend of my daughter’s who lived about 30 miles away. And she was driving along to our house with it in her car, scared to death that a cop would stop her for speeding and give her a ticket and search the car. And there she’d be, with a bag of marijuana in her car.”

His daughter didn’t use much--just a couple of puffs a few times a day--but “it eased the pain, relieved the nausea and diarrhea and made her comfortable,” Nofziger said. Two weeks later, she died.

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The Supreme Court decision has sent Nofziger stumping for legislation that would support research into marijuana’s medical value and lift the prohibitions on its medical use. Last week, he made the rounds of talk shows; this week he plans to meet with at least one legislator. Ultimately, he’s hoping for a chance to spread the gospel among the Bush administration.

“I’m willing to do anything that I can as far as medical marijuana is concerned,” he says.

He’s aware of the pitfalls of becoming a poster boy for a movement that many say is a foot in the door for a left-wing effort to legalize drugs. “I don’t want to go out and legalize marijuana,” he says.

“I understand the thinking [of conservatives] that if you make it acceptable for medical purposes, it’ll eventually be acceptable for anything else, and that will lead people to hard drugs. I know that it may be addictive. But who the hell cares if you’re dying?

“My kid had lymphoma and she was in constant pain. Who the hell cares if she risks getting lung cancer from smoking marijuana? She’s going to be dead anyway! And she shouldn’t have to suffer the way she did, not when there’s something out there that can make her final days a little more comfortable.

“The fact is,” Nofziger says wearily, “they can come up with all these reasons that we ought to keep it [illegal]. But the guys I’m arguing with haven’t had to deal with a situation where they’ve needed it, when you’ve had to watch a daughter die. . . . That puts a whole different spin on things.”

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Sandy Banks’ column runs on Tuesdays and Sundays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.