TAKING ON THE POT LAW

County Should Take Its Objections to Court

Anecdotal evidence and activists' efforts persuaded Californians to
approve a 1996 ballot measure making marijuana use for "medicinal"
purposes legal in California. It was a major mistake into which the
Legislature drew county governments with the later passage of Senate Bill 420.

The bill's very number - "four twenty" - is standard pot slang for
time to toke. But the bill's provisions are no joke: It sets
guidelines, which localities can amend, for the amount of marijuana
that constitutes "medicinal" intent. And it mandates that counties
establish an identification card for people who have a doctor's
prescription for pot and a voluntary "registry" for them, the better
to avoid arrest for pot possession.

Though the city of San Diego unwisely leaped to meet the mandate and
more, few counties have met it. But San Diego County has boldly
refused, in a 3-2 vote last week, and for good and researched
reasons: the mixed legal status of pot, the practical problems of
implementing SB 420, its unproven medicinal value and the proven harm
it can do.

Good reasons, though, won't stop lawsuits, as the county attorney
will point out in a closed board session on Tuesday. Rather than
simply flout the law and invite suits, the supervisors can and should
directly challenge the state law, pressing rather than defending its
case before the court.

And it has a case. Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, which
the U.S. Supreme Court says trumps state law. So compliance with
state guidelines doesn't preclude federal arrests and can facilitate
federal arrests through access to the cards and registry. Nor, the
California Supreme Court has ruled, does state law necessarily
preclude arrest under state law. Despite an I.D. card along with
various pounds of pot, the defendant has the burden of proof of medicinal use.

SB 420, then, puts the county in the awkward position of facilitating
both constituents' illegal drug use and their arrest for it.

Meantime, marijuana's medicinal value use remains, well, anecdotal.
No study has yet shown that smoking marijuana is safer than smoking
anything else or that it is even as effective medicinally as other
legal prescription drugs, some of them derived from the active
ingredients in marijuana.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that inhaling the carcinogens in
marijuana can be dangerous and that pot itself, especially for
children, leads to the use of even more harmful illegal drugs. The
notion that smoking pot is good for any reason won't help dissuade
San Diego youth as young as 11 from making it their most widely used
illicit drug.

The supervisors, in short, have defied a law of a state that delights
in defying federal law. Trying to change that law is the next, and
better, step. State courts haven't shied in the past from overturning
the people's will as expressed through the ballot. Here's another
flawed expression ready for their review and, ultimately, rejection.