MEDICAL MARIJUANA: LEGISLATURE WADES INTO DICEY ISSUE

Many Obstacles To Implementing Law

CARSON CITY -- Oregon medical marijuana advocate Barry Stull figures he
knows what will happen when Nevada legislators try to carry out the wishes
of voters and devise a way for patients to smoke pot.

"The people opposed to marijuana will try to make it fail, no matter what
you do," he said. "Police have been taught to oppose it. It is going to be
a struggle.

"It is hard to get the `Reefer Madness' mentality out of the way," he
continued, referring to the 1930s film on the purported dangers of
pot-smoking that has become a cult classic.

Stull heads Medi-juana, a program in Portland where he grows legal
marijuana for some of the state's 1,000 people registered to use the drug
for AIDS, cancer, glaucoma and other ailments.

Oregon's medical marijuana program has been touted as one of the most
successful among the seven states where patients with a doctor's
authorization can smoke pot.

In August, Dr. Martin Wasserman of the Oregon Health Division said the
program was working as it was intended.

"A substantial number of qualified patients and their physicians are using
it, and only a very few inquiries from law enforcement officials regarding
registered patients have occurred," he said.

The state allows people to grow their own. Each registered patient can grow
seven plants, of which three can be flowering and ready for harvest.

Despite the success of the program, Stull said problems abound. Plants
grown in gardens of registered patients often are stolen. Police uprooted
plants belonging to one patient because there was a single-digit mistake in
his address in the state's medical marijuana registry.

A lawsuit was filed in Oregon over its medical marijuana program, when
police in Portland at first refused to return marijuana that had been
confiscated from a registered patient.

"It won't be easy in Nevada," Stull said.

A voluntary task force of 12 Nevada doctors and pharmacists believes it has
found a better way to avoid the legal hassles of states with medical
marijuana laws.

The Medical Marijuana Initiative Committee proposes that the University of
Nevada Medical School, with branches in Reno and Las Vegas, create a
marijuana research program.

Pot could be grown on a university farm and given to patients. Doctors
would track whether the marijuana helped alleviate their pain, nausea or
other medical symptoms. And furthermore, the research project might secure
approval of federal drug authorities.

"The feds have recently reopened the door and started approving research
projects like this," Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa said. "It would
be 100 percent legal."

Del Papa thinks it would be foolish for Nevada to set up a medical
marijuana distribution program without federal approval.

Marijuana remains against federal law, regardless of what actions states
have taken. Nevada and Colorado became the eighth and ninth states with
medical marijuana laws on Nov. 7 when their voters passed initiative questions.

In Nevada, 65 percent of the voters supported Question 9, which allows
patients -- upon advice of their physicians -- to smoke marijuana. Patients
with cancer, glaucoma, AIDS, epilepsy, nausea, multiple sclerosis and other
conditions approved by law could use the drug.

Like Oregon, the Nevada Legislature must create a registry of patients
authorized by their doctors to use the drug. Only police could check the
registry.

The state also must set up a distribution system to get pot to patients.

In deciding how to carry out the Question 9 mandate, legislators will not
receive specific recommendations from their lawyers when they go into
session Feb. 5.

Legislative Counsel Brenda Erdoes will give lawmakers information on how
medical marijuana laws were carried out in California, Oregon and Washington.

"I will say, `Here are your options,' " Erdoes said. "It appears Oregon and
Washington actually have implemented this with fairly small amounts of
litigation."

Dan Geary, one of the leaders of Nevadans for Medical Rights, said the
doctors' medical marijuana research project violates the wishes of voters.
He favors a grow-your-own program.

"The people have spoken," said Geary, whose organization led the effort to
pass the medical marijuana initiative. "But this unofficial task force
wants to turn a mandate from the people into a research project that would
limit access to marijuana."

Kelly Paige, manager of the Medical Marijuana Program, has said in
published reports that the chief complaint in her state is that users
figure growing seven plants is not enough. Most patients grow their pot
indoors under grow light systems that cost $300 to $500.

None of the 1,068 patients in the Oregon program as of August had been
convicted of any marijuana-related offenses. The typical patient is 46.
Seventy percent are males and two-thirds of patients are using the drug to
control pain.

Del Papa maintains legislators are asking for trouble if they establish a
marijuana distribution program without federal consent.

"You can sue until the cows come in," she said. "But none of it gets you
around the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution."

She foresees the potential for doctors to be arrested if they recommend
marijuana for patients and that, at the least, the program would be
challenged on legal grounds.

But in Oregon, 468 physicians had recommended that their patients be
allowed to use marijuana by the end of August. None had been arrested.

Under federal drug laws, physicians cannot "prescribe" marijuana for
patients. Nevada's law states only that a patient can acquire marijuana
"upon the advice" of a physician.

Del Papa does not feel Nevada should rush into a marijuana law that could
be challenged by federal and state authorities. She pointed out the U.S.
Supreme Court may decide soon whether the Oakland, Calif., Cannabis Buyers'
Cooperative can distribute marijuana to its members.

In August, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the organization not to resume
dispensing marijuana as medicine, at least until it decides whether to
review a lower court's ruling on the matter. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals, based in San Francisco, had allowed the cooperative to distribute
marijuana to qualified patients. The Justice Department appealed that decision.

But the high court's 7-1 decision is not the final ruling on whether state
medical marijuana laws can coexist with the federal Controlled Substance
Act banning all marijuana. The final decision may come before the Nevada
Legislature adjourns in June and could help guide lawmakers in formulating
a distribution program in Nevada, Del Papa said.

Keith MacDonald, the state Board of Pharmacy's executive secretary, agrees
that a physician-run university research program is the best tactic for the
Legislature.

"Why have the election results in Florida done all over again in Nevada?"
he asked. "Why get it bogged down in the courts. It could go on forever if
we pass a distribution plan that the feds oppose."

MacDonald, who co-founded the task force, anticipates a university farm of
a few acres could grow all the marijuana needed by Nevada patients.

He also expects physicians will be reluctant to recommend marijuana to
their patients if a state distribution program lacks federal approval.

"Legislators will have to come up with a way of reducing their fear,"
MacDonald said. "That's why we need a research project."

Although the Nevada research proposal may look promising to legislators,
Stull insists it is based on an erroneous one-size-fits-all way of thinking.

From his experience growing pot in Oregon, he has found marijuana's
potency varies from plant to plant. One patient also may need a half ounce
a day, while another uses an eighth of an ounce per month.

"There is not just one kind of marijuana," he said. "You can grow the wrong
kind. One plant may work great for someone and not for another. We have got
to cut through a lot of the social crap about marijuana before we can
really help people."