MEDICINAL MARIJUANA PROJECT LAUNCHED

There are 600 government-issued marijuana cigarettes in a San Mateo County
public hospital freezer waiting to be distributed -- but so far only one
patient deemed trustworthy and sick enough to take a few home.

The county has been recruiting for its pioneering medicinal marijuana study
for three weeks, since the arrival of the cannabis from a federal farm in
Mississippi.

But only AIDS activist and freelance writer Phillip Alden has met the
study's strict criteria. Within weeks, he'll be smoking carefully marked
joints on his second-floor balcony overlooking the San Francisco Bay. He
says he's doing it for science -- and to help prove that a remedy he has
long relied on can save other lives as well.

That's why Alden doesn't much care if neighbors in his upscale Redwood
Shores condominium complex see him smoking. "I'm not embarrassed or ashamed
of using medical marijuana," he said. "In fact, I'm a huge fan of it."

San Mateo County's cannabis study is out to separate science from anecdotes
like Alden's. The county-funded study is unique in that it releases
marijuana into the possession of patients at home. Most marijuana studies
require smoking in hospital wards or other clinical settings.

Participants being recruited will be free to smoke as many 35 joints a
week, but must keep detailed logs of their smoking as relief for
HIV-related joint pain.

Alden, 37, is the first to meet the study's 18 requirements.

Jonathan Mesinger, the study's program manager, said dozens of
inappropriate candidates have called wanting to participate in the study,
which has room for 60 patients. Recruits must be infected with the human
immunodeficiency virus and have neuropathy, a hard-to-treat condition
causing excruciating pain in the arms, feet, hands and legs.

What's more, they must be experienced smokers with no recent record of
abuse. They must have a stable home life and be reliable enough to keep the
marijuana cigarettes in a locked box.

Participants must know how to smoke marijuana, but can't indulge in other
drugs.

"Everybody in this trial has to have been a user before," Mesinger said.
"We're not introducing anybody to this drug."

Alden -- diagnosed with HIV in 1994 -- has smoked marijuana for medicinal
purposes for the last four years. He had to stop smoking for six weeks to
participate in the county drug trials. He will then spend six weeks
smoking, and the two time periods will be compared by researchers.