I received this in e-mail the other day from a friend of Matthew's. Matthew is at Peace and he is now whole. His suffering, this life, this skin, is gone. He fought a hard battle for himself and for others concerning medical cannabis. Thank you, Matthew.

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So. Dak. Medical Cannabis Patient Dies

My friend, Matthew Ducheneaux (pronounce it DOOSH-uh-no), died Monday
morning, May 23. His brother, Michael, told me that Matthew apparently
choked on a device designed to prevent him from grinding his teeth
while
sleeping. He was attempting to remove it with the extremely limited use
of his left hand and lacked the dexterity to grasp it when he aspirated
it.

That’s because Matthew lost the use of his arms and legs in a car wreck
in 1985. He readily admitted the multiple rollover was as a result of
his being drunk. He quit drinking, determined to live his
wheelchair-bound life as well as he could live it. He became well-read
and well-spoken. He involved himself in both the South Dakota Indian
community and the “chair” community. (I refer to the folks whose
grandparents lived on the prairies and in the mountains in South Dakota
before our grandparents did as “Indian”, because most of my friends in
that category seem to prefer it to “Native American”.)

I met Matthew by phone when I was the Libertarian nominee for governor
in 1998. He called me to offer his help among the crowds he hung out
with. We talked for a long time, but only once (until 2000). Until I
recognized his name as the accused in a marijuana possession
prosecution
in Sioux Falls (SD).

I followed his case as closely as I could, with the help of his public
defender, Chris Moran. Chris was devoted to Matthew’s case, believing
it
contained illustrations of everything that was wrong with the criminal
justice system. I do, too. Within the constraints of the budget Moran
was able to get approved for his defense, he did as well as any lawyer
could. I like him.

Matthew smoked “marijuana” (a political word for “cannabis”, which is
the word I prefer) to relieve the life-threatening muscle spasms often
suffered by survivors of severe spinal injuries. That it works to quell
muscle-tearing, bone-breaking spasms is undeniable; I observed it; it’s
been reported as an anti-spasmodic in numerous medical journals.

His prescription medicine was stuff like Valium, which is a great
little
downer, but who wants to feel like they’re swimming in molasses ALL the
time. His doctor switched him around on pharmaceuticals, but every one
of them either made his hair fall out in clumps, made him catatonic, or
destroyed his liver (Valium did all three, which is, I guess, why it’s
such a great party drug).

Within a year after his accident, Matthew, who said he’d never smoked
cannabis before, was advised by a friend that some people control their
muscle spasms by smoking a doobie. Matthew, who was undergoing a spasm
at the time, took a hit, and the spasms stopped.

He informed his doctor of the phenomenon. Doctor Seidel (his name was
in
the newspaper about this) acknowledged the validity of Matthew’s new
knowledge. He even wrote wrote on a piece of paper that Matthew carried
around with him, “I am aware that Matthew Ducheneaux smokes marijuana
to
alleviate muscle spasms due to his spinal injury.”

Matt learned that the Food and Drug Administration was conducting a
program called the Compassionate Investigational New Drug Study
(CINDS),
and was accepting applications from people who thought they could
benefit by getting their cannabis supplied by the government rather
than
from where everybody else who wants it gets it.

He applied for the CINDS, having done considerable research into the
specific phenomenon of cannabis’ ability to quell muscle spasms. After
about two years of letter-trading with the FDA, he was approved as a
patient to be involved in the study of whether cannabis was indeed of
medical value.

But the Drug Enforcement Administration had to be involved because not
just anyone can be trusted to actually touch “marijuana”,
notwithstanding the fact that ANYBODY who want marijuana can get it
within about 15 minutes.

There is a U.S. Gummint Pot Farm in Mississippi somewhere. CINDS weed
had to come from there, through the DEA, which in turn required that
Matthew Ducheneaux had to find a pharmacy that would provide a vault,
and a 24-hour armed guard to protect the kids of Sioux Falls from the
remote possibility that someone would bypass the morphine and Oxycontin
in easily-jimmied drawers to bust open the vault door to get the weed
if
the armed guard weren’t there.

I am not exaggerating the DEA’s demands before it would facilitate
getting gummint weed to a person who needed it to stay alive.

Of course, no druggist in Sioux Falls would meet the preposterous
demands. So Matthew continued to do what anyone who wants cannabis
does;
often people gave it to him, he bought it at bars, on the street, at AA
meetings, in short, wherever he goddam wanted to—just like the rest of
us.

There was no choice to be made. If he quelled the spasms with
prescription drugs, he lost his liver. Cannabis had NO adverse side
effects. He could function as well as a quadriplegic in his condition
could, while smoking cannabis two or three times a day as he sensed a
spasm coming on.

He lived in Sioux Falls for most of the ‘90s, involved in Indian
politics and wheelchair society. In July, 2000, he went to blues and
jazz festival at a park in Sioux Falls. While there, he felt a spasm
coming on and went to a secluded place away from the crowd and smoked.
Two bicycle cops spotted him, checked it out and arrested him.

That was the opening shot in a strange series of events that yielded
exactly nothing for anyone involved, except for the taxpayers of
Minnehaha County, who ended up paying close to $350,000 for County
Prosecutor Dave Nelson’s personal stupidity and venality.

Nelson insisted on prosecuting Ducheneaux for possession. “He broke the
law, didn’t he?”

Ducheneaux, through Chris Moran (in the public defender’s office),
pursued a “prevention of greater harm” defense. This course is
illustrated by the comparison to the person who takes a boat not his in
order to save a drowning person. The larceny statute is overridden by
the prevention of a greater harm. In Matthew’s case, of course, the
drowning person was himself.

Patricia Riepel, the Sioux Falls magistrate hearing the case, granted
the petition to use the “prevention” defense. After Nelson’s office
appealed that decision, the senior judge in the jurisdiction, Peter
Lieberman, overruled Riepel. Moran appealed to the So. Dak. Supreme
Court.

The SD Supreme Court held for Lieberman, so Ducheneaux went to trial,
which I attended, in August of 2002. While Ducheneaux was allowed to
tell the jury his story, the judge was forced to tell the jury that the
facts didn’t matter; as a matter of law, if the jury found that he
possessed “marijuana” (which he admitted), then they had to find him
guilty. He was found guilty.

Judge Riepel sentenced Matthew to a few days in jail, suspended, and a
$250 fine. She asked, “Do you need some time to pay?” He answered,
“I’ll
never pay the fine.” She smiled and said, “You can have as much time as
you need.”

In the summer of 2004, So. Dak. Rep. Tom Hennies, chair of a
subcommittee of South Dakota lawmakers conducting a criminal code
revision, invited me to testify on marijuana laws. I invited Matthew to
be part of the presentation, along with Mike Gray (author of “Drug
Crazy”).

Matthew described his muscle spasms (“It feels like somebody’s hittin’
be in the back with an axe. I can’t breathe, like I’m being squeezed by
an anaconda.”) Hennies asked him how he would like to see the laws
changed. Matthew said, “Jeez, just do it.”

Hennies proposed a medical use exception to the law. Prosecutor Nelson
and a So. Dak. judge, Tim Tucker, (both non-legislative members of the
committee) said that such a change would be “a burden on judges and the
system”.

That episode, along with our three failed attempts to get debate on the
therapeutic cannabis question in the legislature since 1999, led us to
initiate a petition drive to put the issue on the ballot. We started
obtaining signatures May 7. You can see the proposed new law at
http://www.SoDakSafeAccess.org/.

On June 5, I’ll start a bicycle trek across South Dakota to help raise
awareness of the therapeutic cannabis issue. In view of Matthew’s
death,
I have decided to name the ride the Matthew Ducheneaux Trail to Safe
Access Bicycle Tour, and will continue to conduct it each year until
sanity and compassion reign on this issue.

At all times when thinking of medical use of marijuana, remember that
those who know cannabis benefits them defy the law daily to reduce
their
discomfort or suffering and to improve the quality of or extend their
lives. The law is irrelevant to sick, disabled and dying people. Let’s
recognize that and change the law to reflect reality.

Let’s do it partially for Matthew.