GRASS-ROOTS EFFORT

Colorado Joins Other States Putting Medicinal-Marijuana Issue In Voters' Hands

Rob Conaway is dying. Colorado voters will decide whether he dies a criminal.

Mr. Conaway, a 50-year-old Denver resident, smokes the equivalent of a
couple marijuana cigarettes a week to combat nausea and depression from an
array of prescription AIDS drugs. He is so debilitated, he can only get out
of bed for a few hours at a time.

On Nov. 7, Colorado voters will decide whether seriously or chronically ill
people such as Mr. Conaway should be allowed to use pot for medical
purposes with physician approval.

"To me, this has nothing to do with street drugs or pot legalization," Mr.
Conaway said. "With my Social Security disability checks, I have a very
limited income. To keep it as an illegal drug just puts the risk of getting
arrested and its street price on top of everything else, and it just adds
to the stress."

If Amendment 20 passes - and recent polls suggest it will - Colorado would
be the nation's eighth state to approve the use of medical marijuana. But
while the issue makes progress state by state, the federal government
remains staunchly opposed and is fighting at the Supreme Court level.

In fact, in California - the first state to approve marijuana for use by
the seriously ill - the future of this grass-roots movement is hazy at best.

"It's controlled chaos," said Nathan Barankin, spokesman for California
Attorney General Bill Lockyer, a proponent of pot for the sick. California
passed its initiative in 1996, before Mr. Lockyer took office. But he is
stuck trying to fix the problems with it.

Mr. Barankin said the initiative was poorly drafted. "It raised more
questions than it answered," he said.

The California law failed to clearly outline how marijuana would be
dispensed. The result is a patch-work system of enforcement that varies
widely from county to county.

Opponents of the Colorado initiative say that state is about to make the
same mistake.

"It doesn't say where people are supposed to get it," said Larry Wall,
president of the Colorado Health and Hospital Association and a member of
Coloradans Against Legalizing Marijuana.

"If you don't grow your own, the initiative is silent on that issue. And
that's one of the problems," Mr. Wall said. "It would assume that you could
buy it from a dealer. Now, is that legal dealer, or illegal? I don't think
anybody knows."

Alaska, Oregon, Washington and Arizona legalized medicinal marijuana in
1998; Maine in 1999. Hawaii legalized it this year by an act of its
legislature. Nevada approved it in 1998, but its state constitution
requires approval in two consecutive general elections, and it's on the
ballot again this fall.

Maine's initiative is credited for most clearly addressing distribution
methods, by calling for recommendations from a state task force, which
recently endorsed distribution through a controlled, regulated state-run
dispensary.

Epicenter Of The Battle:

Ground zero for the battle over medicinal marijuana in California is at the
Co-op Stop on Broadway in Oakland, formerly known as the Oakland Cannabis
Buyers' Cooperative. It changed names when it was forced to stop dispensing
marijuana on orders from a federal judge.

Jeff Jones, who runs the co-op, thinks California will help shape the
future of the medical marijuana movement, possibly through a Supreme Court
decision or by influencing a change in marijuana's status as a Schedule I
narcotic, which requires it to be as tightly regulated as heroin.

"There will have to be a control mechanism and an ability to make sure that
it is regulated in a fashion that is not restrictive, but it is still not
getting out on the street," Mr. Jones said.

In 1998, the Justice Department charged Mr. Jones' co-op and five others in
northern California with violating the Controlled Substances Act. The
California initiative had put those who dispensed marijuana in direct
conflict with federal drug laws.

Mr. Jones is fighting the federal government with a legal team that
includes attorney Gerald Uelman, a member of the O.J. Simpson defense. He
insists his advocacy of medical marijuana is not part of a larger mission:
"It doesn't change the law in any fashion for people who are using it for
illicit purposes, or growing it for illicit purposes."

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who issued the order to close Mr.
Jones' club, ruled against a defense of "medical necessity" - the legal
doctrine that a law can be broken when it is the only way to prevent a more
serious harm.

In 1999, in answer to an appeal of Judge Breyer's ruling, the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals ruled a "medical necessity" defense was not precluded by
federal law. Judge Breyer, according to the appellate court, should have
considered the needs of patients "who suffer imminent harm" without
marijuana and had no legal alternative.

The higher court ordered Judge Breyer to reconsider the Oakland case, and
he reversed his ruling on July 17, finding in favor of the Oakland club and
the 3,500 members that it claims.

The Justice Department is appealing that decision to the U.S. Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals; the U.S. Supreme Court granted an emergency stay of Judge
Breyer's order on Aug. 29.

Proponents of medical marijuana lean heavily on a 1999 report by the
National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine, which said that
marijuana's active components are "potentially effective in treating pain,
nausea, the anorexia of AIDS wasting and other symptoms."

But its opponents point to the same report's contention that the potential
health dangers associated with chronic marijuana smoking merit further
study, and the fact that marijuana's active ingredient can be delivered
through the prescription drug Marinol.

Standard Not Formed:

California lawmakers considered legislation this year for a standard means
of providing marijuana to the ill. That bill, painstakingly crafted by a
task force appointed by Mr. Lockyer, was never brought up for a vote by the
state assembly because of a lack of support.

What happens next?

"That's a good question," said Mr. Barankin, the attorney general's
spokesman. "Like any legislation, you don't give up and walk away at the
first sign of failure. There will probably be additional legislative
efforts to clarify the law."

Mr. Barankin said that one reason medical marijuana has created an
enforcement and administrative nightmare is that the concept lacked strong
front-end support from some California law enforcement agencies.

Some California buyers' clubs obtained pot from sick people who were
permitted to grow it for their own use under the state's new law and had
excess harvest, Mr. Jones said. But police and prosecutors see such an
arrangement as ripe for abuse by people with criminal intent, he said.

"We just need to provide more certainty for not only sick people in
California, but also law enforcement, who, with each passing day, are
becoming more and more frustrated with the lack of clarity in the law," Mr.
Jones said.

Examples of the range of medical marijuana's legacy in California:

- - Federal agents charged Los-Angeles area writer-publisher Peter McWilliams
with manufacturing and distributing marijuana that he cultivated for use in
his battle with AIDS and AIDS-related cancer. Unable to use the authority
of the state initiative in a federal case, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy
charges.

- - Emboldened by the federal government's tough stance in the Oakland case,
Ventura County officials closed down its sole medical marijuana distributor
in 1998 with a civil lawsuit filed by its district attorney, forcing the
county's two dozen medical marijuana users to go elsewhere for the drug.

- - San Francisco officials in July created a registry - with the support of
the district attorney - in which patients can obtain a card for a $25 fee
that shields them from arrest in that city. San Francisco followed a
precedent established in Santa Cruz, Arcata and Mendocino County.

Colorado would likely face such divisiveness over the application of its
law, given that its opponents include the Colorado District Attorney's
Council, the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police and Gov. Bill Owens.

Chuck Thomas, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy
Project, - which advocates in favor of medicinal marijuana - said the
therapeutic use of marijuana represents an irreversible tide and that most
opposition comes from "the usual gang of idiots - the police, the prison
guards, the people who have a vested, financial interest in being able to
arrest as many people as possible."

"People need to be asked," said Mr. Thomas, "should patients be arrested?
If the answer is yes, vote against the initiative. But, if the answer is
no, then there's only one way to keep patients out of prison in the United
States, and it's for states to pass such initiatives."

Mr. Conaway, who was active in the battle for gay rights as a younger man
living in San Francisco, is cautious in assessing the future of pot for the
sick.

"Passing this initiative in Colorado does not mean that the fight is over,"
he said. "Having fought for gay rights and things, I know it's a constant
struggle, and you just take one thing at a time.

"You don't get it all in one step, and even with one victory, it can later
be lost. It's true for anybody's cause, whether it's human rights or
anything else. It's one step at a time, and you just don't give up."