AFTER OVERWHELMING VOTER MANDATE, LEGISLATORS LEFT TO REHASH MEDICAL MARIJUANA

CARSON CITY, Nev. -- Nevadans voted overwhelmingly last year to approve
using marijuana for medical purposes. Now the state's lawmakers -- however
reluctant -- must rehash the issue to implement the voters' will.

That some legislators are less than enthusiastic isn't surprising: Despite
the medical marijuana vote, Nevada still has some of the nation's harshest
criminal penalties for drug use and possession.

Also, marijuana use remains a federal law violation. The Justice Department
has gone to court to challenge medical marijuana distribution programs in
other states.

"This ballot measure was strictly emotionalism and an entire waste of
time," Arnold Wax, a Las Vegas oncologist, said after the measure passed.
"It's an issue of state's rights and federalism. The federal government has
shut down efforts to prescribe it in other states, it will do the same
thing here."

The ballot initiative approved by nearly two of every three voters allows
use of marijuana by cancer, AIDS and glaucoma patients, as well as others
with painful and potentially terminal illnesses. The amendment to the
Nevada Constitution first won voter approval in 1998 and Question 9 passed
a second time last November.

The 2-to-1 voter mandate is no problem for Assemblywoman Chris
Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas. She says Nevada should set up a state registry
of marijuana users similar to a program operated by state health officials
in Oregon.

Unlike Oregon, which lets authorized users grow marijuana plants, she wants
the state to provide marijuana, possibly through a state-run farm.

Others, such as Sen. Ann O'Connell are apprehensive. She said she is
concerned about amounts of marijuana that users can take and whether they
can drive or use marijuana in public. She also wonders whether people with
records of drug abuse will be allowed into the registry.

One way to resolve a looming legislative impasse would be to set up a
marijuana "research program" overseen by the University of Nevada Medical
School.

Under the plan, marijuana could be grown on a few acres of university
farmland and given to patients. Doctors would track whether the marijuana
helped ease their pain, nausea or other symptoms.

Keith Macdonald, executive secretary of the state Board of Pharmacy and a
task force leader, said the physician-run university research program might
be approved by federal authorities.

Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa agrees -- and has warned that
legislators are asking for trouble if they establish a program without
federal consent.