Karl Foster noticed a poster emblazoned with the leaf of a marijuana plant and wanted to know what it was all about.
The Student Programming Council showed the film "Waiting to Inhale" followed by a panel discussion Thursday night to a half-full Student Center Auditorium, with Dr. Christopher Fichtner and Gretchen Steele of the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation.
Foster, a senior from Ottawa studying journalism, said he noticed the flyers around campus and wanted to find out what was going on.
Carbondale was the last stop in a six-city tour showing the film that started in Chicago and moved through Illinois. The tour was funded by several groups, including Illinois Humanities Council, National Endowment for the Humanities and the Illinois General Assembly.
The documentary is the latest entry in an ongoing debate over the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes. Focusing on certain activist groups, the film addresses key aspects of the movement and the roles played by the government and the media.
Director and producer Jed Riffe said he hopes the interest in the film will create a deepened awareness of the movement and move the viewing public to communicate with legislators on the issue.
"People do not have access to this information, the scientific studies or clinical trials," Riffe said. "One person is worth a thousand television viewers. That's one person to write to their legislator or send an e-mail."
Gretchen Steele said she hopes students are able to gain a better understanding of what the film is advocating.
Steele, a Coulterville native and registered nurse suffering from multiple sclerosis, finds the criminalization of medicinal marijuana illogical. "It's ludicrous that some of the drugs are just horrific," Steele said of such prescription medicines as Vicodan and Oxycontin, drugs that have been known to be addictive. "But they can't prescribe marijuana to me?"
Melvin Parks, the student programming council director of films, said the showing of the film was purely coincidence and has no connection to the recent request by SIUC's smoking laboratory for a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
The lab's director, David Gilbert, has said the request would ask for six studies, each of which would cost about $200,000.
Andre Spencer can be reached at 536-3311 ext. 254 or spenc@siu.edu.
