Mormon Doctor Leads Fight For Pot Prescriptions Aids Victim’s Search For Marijuana Inspired Physician To File Initiative

Dr. Rob Killian hardly seemed the sort of person who would file an initiative to let doctors prescribe marijuana for relief of nausea and other pain.

Reared in a conservative Mormon family in Issaquah, he didn’t smoke or drink alcohol as a youngster.

Only after a Mormon friend with AIDS told him of his desperate search for pot did Killian make his political move.

In March, he filed Initiative 685, the Drug Medicalization and Prevention Act, which would allow a doctor to prescribe marijuana and other illegal drugs to a seriously ill patient if a second doctor agreed that the prescription was appropriate.

The measure is similar to one passed by voters in Arizona last November.

“My experience has taught me that we need to see with bigger eyes and get away from the moral good and bad,” Killian said. “It’s time to act.”

He and his supporters have until July 3 to gather the valid signatures of at least 179,248 registered voters to put the measure on the ballot in November. So far, Killian said, about 50,000 people have signed.

A leading opponent, Lt. Gov. Brad Owen, said the initiative goes far beyond pot.

“You could just as well say it’s the medicinal-use-of-heroin initiative,” Owen said. “It’s pretty obvious that the purpose of this is to legalize the use of drugs.”

Killian, 36, said most drugs covered by the initiative never would be prescribed because they don’t have any medical benefit, but they are included because political pressure would make it difficult for a doctor to get an illegal drug approved for every experimental or compassionate use.

“If a doctor is giving out drugs unscrupulously, he’s a drug dealer and he’ll lose his license and go to jail,” he added.

The Washington State Medical Association is expected to consider the issue at its annual membership meeting in September.

Killian, a graduate of the University of Utah medical school, said he has tried marijuana twice out of curiosity.

He said he began realizing the complexity of drug issues soon after graduation when he went to work with the homeless, many of them drug addicts, in Washington, D.C.

He later worked at two hospices for terminal patients in Rochester, N.Y., where a colleague told him how marijuana relieves nausea and enhances appetite in AIDS patients and people undergoing chemotherapy for cancer.

Last summer Killian went to work as a family doctor for Community Health Care, which operates clinics for lowincome people in Pierce County.

In opinion pieces for the News Tribune of Tacoma and several other newspapers, Killian criticized federal officials for threatening to withdraw the prescriptionissuing authority of doctors who recommend marijuana. He said he would continue to recommend pot when he felt it was medically advisable.

One of the calls of support he received was from a Mormon friend in Utah who wanted marijuana to help stop weight loss from treatment for AIDS.

The friend had tried an AIDS foundation, then cruised rough neighborhoods in Salt Lake City without finding a source of supply. Finally, his brother provided a pipe, a bag of pot and a telephone number for refills.

Killian said that experience prompted him to file Initiative 685 so law-abiding sick people no longer would be forced to risk arrest to buy marijuana that might be tainted.