CANCER PATIENTS TURN TO STREET MARIJUANA

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)--Cancer is eating away at Creighton Frost. His
lymph glands, thyroid, larynx and many of the muscles on his right
side have been removed. Marijuana, he says, is his only comfort.

Frost used to get the drug from the Oakland Cannabis Buyers'
Cooperative, a city-sanctioned club that openly challenged the
federal government - but conformed to California law - by offering
marijuana to people with a doctor's recommendation.

''I'm dying and falling apart a little bit at a time. I want some way
to not have such a miserable death,'' Frost said.

Whether marijuana can be doled out to ill patients for pain relief is
now up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided Monday to hear the
federal government's efforts to ban such use.

Frost, who lives in the San Francisco suburb of San Ramon, has been
forced to get his marijuana illegally since August, when the court
ordered the club to cease operations at the request of the Clinton
administration.

The high court is expected to hear the case next year.

Justice Department lawyers said more than two dozen organizations
have been distributing marijuana for medical purposes in California,
Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington.

California passed a medical marijuana law in 1996 and those states
and four others - Arizona, Maine, Nevada and Colorado - have followed.

It is unclear whether the court will consider solely whether
marijuana clubs violate federal law, or rule on the legality of
medical marijuana laws in their entirety.

Allowing clubs to distribute marijuana ''threatens the government's
ability to enforce the federal drug laws,'' the Justice Department
told the high court. Jeff Jones, co-founder of the Oakland club, said
the cooperative has given out 4,000 identification cards to members
who have a doctor's recommendation to smoke marijuana.

''We have faith when the Supreme Court hears this case that it will
consider the needs of the patients who are suffering,'' he said.

Generally, the state laws allow sick and dying patients with a
doctor's recommendation to grow marijuana themselves or obtain it
from a so-called ''caregiver.'' While the laws do not necessarily
permit marijuana clubs, states have allowed them if they cater to
sick and dying patients.

Frost and other patients say marijuana settles the stomach, builds
weight, steadies spastic muscles and provides relief from other
ailments.

The Justice Department, however, told the high court that marijuana
has ''no currently accepted medical use.''

In 1998, federal Judge Charles Breyer sided with the government in
its efforts to halt the Oakland club from distributing the drug. An
appeals court reversed, ruling that ''medical necessity'' is a legal
defense.

Breyer is the brother of Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who
has recused himself from the case.