CALAVERAS RECONSIDERS POT USE

Medical-Marijuana Task Force Sets Limits On Possession

SAN ANDREAS -- A set of medical marijuana-use guidelines that Calaveras
County supervisors rejected last month will be reconsidered when the board
meets Monday.

A board-appointed task force developed the guidelines during the course of
four meetings over six months and made its recommendation more than six
weeks ago.

But the board rejected the so-called interagency protocol, designed to help
law enforcement officials determine which cases of marijuana possession
would be considered for personal medical use and which would be considered
illegal possession and/or cultivation.

The passage of Proposition 215 in 1996 legalized the use of marijuana to
treat certain illnesses. But since the state never developed guidelines to
implement the law, some counties and cities have created their own.

The local task force, which included doctors, pharmacists, law enforcement
officials and one medical-marijuana user, developed a protocol recommending
that those with a legal right to marijuana for medicinal purposes could
possess six plants and 1.3 pounds of processed marijuana at any one time.

Those numbers represented a significant reduction from suggestions at a
previous task-force meeting, at which the group had recommended 30 plants
and 4 pounds of processed marijuana would be considered legitimate amounts
for bona fide medical-marijuana patients.

Supervisors Merita Callaway and Lucy Thein voted to support the protocol
when it was presented Sept. 5, but board Chairman Tom Tryon and Supervisors
Paul Stein and Terri Bailey voted against it.

Tryon turned it down because he said the protocol would have been more
restrictive on medical-marijuana users than no guidelines at all.

Tryon and Callaway asked to have the guidelines come back for
reconsideration at Monday's 10 a.m. meeting at the Government Center.

"I'd like to do something," Tryon said, referring to the guidelines, "but
I'd like it to be meaningful. The question is, can we find enough middle
ground for three of us to vote on something?"

Callaway said she's willing to support guidelines that allow for more than
six plants and 1.3 pounds of processed marijuana.

"There are people out there close to dying who could use something," she
said, referring to the guidelines. "But what that magic number is, I don't
know."

In addition to setting limits on the amount of marijuana a legitimate
medical user could possess, the proposed protocol would require patients to
secure a doctor's recommendation that includes the date of the
recommendation, the patient's illness, a prescribed or recommended dosage,
quantity and frequency of usage and duration of the recommendation,
complete with a semiannual review for medical necessity.

David Jack, an Angels Camp medical-marijuana user and a task-force member,
said the protocol represented a violation of a patient's civil rights.

"My feeling has always been, this is a medical issue, not a law enforcement
issue," he said. "It's between the patient and the physician. When law
enforcement comes in, you lose that patient/ physician privilege."

To reach Lode Bureau Chief Francis P. Garland, phone 736-9554 or e-mail
garnel@goldrush.com