HOME-GROWN MEDICINE

Thousands Turn To Medical Marijuana, But Many Questions Still Need Answers

The patient inhales sweet pungent smoke and within seconds THC and
marijuana's other active ingredients move from the lungs into the
bloodstream and head for the brain.

The chemicals, known as cannabinoids, attach to the brain's cannabis
receptors, creating not only a stoned feeling but also stimulating
appetite, relieving nausea and easing pain.

It's an exercise repeated countless times each day by thousands of sick
people in Oregon and across the West who have turned to marijuana, with
their doctors' blessings, to help them in ways that pharmaceutical drugs don't.

But all this smoking is taking place in hazy, uncharted legal and medical
territory.

Using marijuana for medical reasons remains illegal under federal law. And
many doctors are skeptical of marijuana's benefits and fearful of getting
in trouble with federal regulators.

So even as Oregon's medical marijuana registry grows at an exponential
rate, patients and doctors struggle to navigate the law's many gray areas.

"The law was written to pass. It wasn't written to work," said Todd
Dalotto, a local cannabis activist.

Two years after deciding that some sick people should be allowed to grow
and smoke marijuana, Oregonians find themselves at the cutting edge of this
green new world.

Spreading Like A Weed:

By most accounts, the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act, or OMMA, is working
reasonably well, despite conflicting interpretations about how the law is
supposed to work.

The state's first-of-its-kind patient registry, which has since been copied
by Hawaiian lawmakers, has helped remove some of the uncertainty that has
plagued California's medical marijuana law.

"Since we were the first state to have a statewide registration system,"
said Kelly Paige, who manages the medical marijuana program for the state
Health Division, "I think we're a little more organized in terms of having
a central contact point for all people to call and ask questions."

California's pioneering Proposition 215, passed in 1996, didn't establish a
central state registry, nor did it place a limit on the number of plants a
patient may grow. It simply required that a patient have a doctor's note.
The result has been legal chaos. The law is enforced differently around the
state and has been subject to a number of lawsuits. By contrast, Oregon's
Measure 67, approved by 55 percent of voters in November 1998, has seen
relatively smooth sailing.

"In terms of the initial effort, the state of Oregon deserves some credit
because they have strived to make the new law work the way the voters
intended," said Keith Stroup, executive director of the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, a Washington, D.C.-based
lobbying group known as NORML.

After a relatively slow start, Oregon's registry has grown at a rapid clip.
In its first year, 594 patients registered with the program. In the past
nine months, the number has climbed to 1,600.

Nearly 500 physicians have signed forms or made chart notes for patients
about marijuana's potential benefits, an increase of more than 50 percent
since May.

Paige said she gets 30 to 40 phone calls a day from doctors, patients,
police, lawyers, legislators and reporters inquiring about the law. She
traveled to Hawaii last year to help legislators there write their own
medical marijuana law.

What's happening in Oregon is just one skirmish in what advocates view as a
green revolution that started in California in 1996.

Today, a majority of voters in eight states - Oregon, Alaska, Washington,
California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Maine - as well as the Hawaii
Legislature have decided that sick people should be able to smoke marijuana
if it makes them feel better.

That means about 20 percent of the U.S. population lives in states where
medical marijuana is legal.

"Since 1996, there's been this revolt by voters when elected officials
wouldn't deal with it," said NORML's Stroup. "What you're seeing is the
public growing very weary of the excesses of the war on drugs. ... What
you're seeing is a blueprint for the future."

The state ballot measures are no accident, but rather are part of an
ambitious campaign funded by New York financier George Soros and two other
billionaires and coordinated by Americans for Medical Rights, a Santa
Monica, Calif.-based group.

The group, which persuaded Californians to legalize medical marijuana in
1996, has poured money into medical marijuana campaigns in Oregon, Alaska,
Colorado and Maine.

But all the ballot measures in the world wouldn't pass if the public didn't
support the idea, and opinion polls show they do. A 1999 Gallup poll found
that nearly three of four Americans (73 percent) support allowing doctors
to prescribe marijuana, with support cutting across age groups and party lines.

Two in three Americans (64 percent) oppose legalizing marijuana outright,
according to a Gallup poll conducted in December. Americans were nearly
evenly split, however, on whether possessing small amounts of marijuana
should be treated as a criminal offense, the poll found.

Yet, since 1971, the government has classified marijuana as a drug with no
legitimate medical use - akin to heroin and LSD - meaning it can't be
prescribed by doctors.

Federal officials have fought the California law on various fronts, and
their efforts will get the biggest legal test to date when the U.S. Supreme
Court hears a case in March involving the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Club. At
issue is whether "medical necessity" is a valid defense under federal drug law.

Medical marijuana advocates argue that "medical necessity" is an ancient
common law defense that still applies to patients for whom marijuana is the
only therapy that works. Therefore, they have the right to that medicine.

The federal government counters that states have no right to waive federal
drug laws, and that marijuana has "no currently accepted medical use."

Some Police Skeptical

In Oregon, law enforcement officials report few problems enforcing the law,
though some are skeptical of activists' true motives.

"Medical marijuana is, I think, something of a dodge," said Clatsop County
District Attorney Josh Marquis, president of the Oregon District Attorneys
Association. "It's a little disingenuous. It's really an attempt to
legalize marijuana without doing so."

While NORML has long called for legalizing marijuana, Stroup disputes
that's the hidden agenda of medical marijuana advocates.

"This is not an attempt to have recreational smokers come in under the
guise of medical use," he said. "These are serious and legitimate patients
with serious illnesses who very frequently find marijuana is the only drug
that will relieve their pain and suffering."

But one of the unintended benefits of these laws, he said, is that "people
begin to take a more rational look at marijuana" and realize that "it no
longer makes sense for the government to make claims of `reefer madness.' "

Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Noelle, a vocal opponent of Measure 67, said
many of the problems he predicted haven't come to pass. "From my position,
I have not seen as many of the attempts to manipulate the law as I had
expected."

It has made investigators' work more cumbersome, he said, because they
first are supposed to check with the state Health Division to see if
someone suspected of growing marijuana is a card-holder before they knock
on the door.

"It's made it more difficult," he said, "but it's not something we haven't
been able to work with."

Junction City Police Chief Michael Cahill, who also spoke out against
Measure 67 as a spokesman for Oregon Police Chiefs for Safer Communities,
remains convinced the law has made it easier for teens to rationalize
smoking marijuana.

"As predicted, it has created a lot more confusion in youths' minds about
whether it's a drug or a substance they can abuse," he said.

Eugene police Sgt. Lee Thoming, supervisor of the Interagency Narcotics
Enforcement Team, said the law is a "minor nuisance" for drug enforcers,
but he doesn't begrudge truly sick people using marijuana if it helps them.

"First and foremost, if someone is dying a horrible death and in incredible
pain," he said, "we ought to give them anything they want to deal with that."

Co-Ops Offer Alternative

Medical marijuana cooperatives as well as formal and informal networks have
sprouted up around Oregon.

In Lane County, there's the Eugene Cannabis Grow-Op. In Klamath Falls,
there's Green Mountain Medical Co-Op. In Portland, there's Medi-Juana and
other groups.

The groups help patients solve two of the most difficult aspects of the
law: getting started growing marijuana and developing a steady, reliable
supply of medicine.

The law permits card-holding patients to designate a "caregiver," someone
to grow marijuana for them if they can't or don't want to grow themselves.

Dalotto, one of the founders of the Eugene Cannabis Grow-Op, said the
purpose of the cooperative is "to implement and expand" the law, to help
marijuana patients find caregivers to grow for them, and to educate the public.

Dalotto, who has had several marijuana-related scrapes with the law, views
the cooperative as a vehicle to legitimize the law and medical marijuana.

"People being able to grow marijuana legally is a new thing. If we don't
get organized and do it right, we might use it or lose it."

Whether the law permits caregivers and patients to pool their resources and
form cooperatives is a question that not even the state's top legal
authority can answer.

"I can't get a good answer for you on the cooperative question," said Kevin
Neely, spokesman for the state attorney general's office.

"The law is silent," said Phil Studenberg, a Klamath Falls criminal defense
attorney and member of the NORML legal committee.

Lee Berger, a Portland lawyer who helped write the medical marijuana law,
said Measure 67 backers didn't anticipate the question of cooperatives.

"It's the kind of thing we ought to amend the law to allow to make sure no
one gets in trouble for doing," said Berger, a member of the NORML legal
committee. "It's not clear if it's legal or illegal at this point."

It's just one of many gray areas in the law.

Also unclear is whether a single caregiver can grow for multiple patients.
In its advice to police for enforcing the law, the attorney general's
office lays out two conflicting interpretations to this question, but comes
to no firm recommendation.

Under one interpretation, a single caregiver could grow marijuana for
multiple patients as long as he or she doesn't grow more than a total of
seven plants. Under the other interpretation, a single caregiver can grow
seven plants for each of his or her patients.

Berger said he's gotten calls asking, " `If I got 10 people, can I grow 70
plants?' I told them I didn't think that would work."

Yet in reality, some caregivers are growing seven plants for each of their
patients and haven't gotten in trouble with police.

"Some people are sort of testing the limits," said John Sajo, director of
Voter Power, a Portland medical marijuana support group.

"This summer people grew outdoor gardens for more than one patient. Police
came and let them keep the garden. This happened in a number of cases."

True Believers

Patients of all stripes are using medical marijuana, according to
statistics from the registry's first year, the most recent available. They
range in age from 14 to 87, with an average age of 46, and 70 percent are
males. Two-thirds of patients used marijuana to control severe and chronic
pain.

Clearly many of the people most interested in exploiting and seeing the law
succeed are marijuana activists whose ultimate goal is the legalization of
marijuana.

And Eugene, with its deep vein of counter-culture activism, is fertile ground.

There's Michael Anthony, an excommunicated Mormon priest who is now pastor
of his own church, HEMP (Help Everyone Make Peace) Ministries, formerly the
Church of Latter Day Hempsters of Christ. He's presided over three "hemp"
weddings, testifies before the Eugene City Council on the benefits of
cannabis, and likens his struggle to that of Jesus Christ, Gandhi and
Martin Luther King Jr.

"I believe all cannabis use is religious," he said.

There's Bruce Mullican, owner of Sow Much Hemp, a store in downtown Eugene
that specializes in products made from hemp, as well as bongs and pipes. He
recites the history of industrial and medical uses of hemp and cannabis in
America from memory.

And there's Dalotto, a New Jersey native, a longtime marijuana activist and
author of "The Hemp Cookbook: From Seed to Shining Seed."

"Naturally I have a very high connection with this plant," he said. "I've
been communing with it for many years."

Since the mid-1990s, he's been involved in several high-profile stories in
Eugene with a decidedly green tint.

First there was his snack business, Hungry Bear Hemp Foods, through which
he baked and sold "Seedy Sweeties," a chewy energy bar made with
sterilized, "super nutritious" hemp seeds.

Then there was the 1995 outdoor reggae concert, which turned into a melee
after Eugene police arrested Dalotto for selling hemp smoothies without a
permit.

In March 1997, someone in Switzerland shipped a package of marijuana to 302
Blair Blvd., the building that Dalotto's business shared with Ickies Tea
House and other tenants. That led police to raid Hungry Bear Hemp Foods.

Dalotto, who said he refused to sign for or accept the package from an
undercover postal inspector, was charged with five counts of distributing
marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms. Eventually, prosecutors dropped the
felony charges in exchange for Dalotto's guilty plea to possessing less
than an ounce of marijuana.

The incident killed his snack business, but now Dalotto has channeled his
energies into the Eugene Cannabis Grow-Op.

He sees medical marijuana as a way to change people's attitudes and counter
what he views as government lies.

"Now that we've moved forward enough where we can legally use it for
medicine, it's a great opportunity to advance its use as medicine, to
benefit humans and life all around us," he said.

"The more people understand what the plant is about, the less they fear
it," he said. "The prohibitionist lies just aren't holding water anymore."

RESOURCES For more information on the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act, or to
acquire an application packet, contact program manager Kelly Paige at (503)
731-8310, or at kelly.paige@state.or.us, or visit the program's Web page at
www.ohd.hr.state.or.us/hclc/mm The Eugene Cannabis Grow-Op meets the first
Wednesday of each month at the Baker Building, 975 High St., Room 134,
Eugene (use 10th Avenue). The 6 p.m. meeting is an introduction on how the
law works. The 7 p.m. meeting is a support group for people enrolled in the
medical marijuana program. For more information, call (541) 484-6558, or
send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to PO Box 10445, Eugene, OR, 97440.
- - The Register-Guard