MEDICAL MARIJUANA BILL DIES

LANSING -- A bill to allow people with "debilitating medical
conditions" to legally use marijuana to ease their symptoms died in
the Michigan Legislature on Tuesday, and backers say the issue will
likely be left up to voters to decide.

Following an often emotional, 90-minute hearing before a state House
committee, the panel broke without taking a vote. It was the first
and only hearing on the legislation, introduced a year ago.

The inaction means the bill will have to be reintroduced in a new
session in January.

Supporters of the legislation, many battling diseases, packed the
standing-room-only hearing room wearing red buttons that said: "Stop
arresting patients for medical marijuana."

The hearing attracted lawmakers from other states encouraging support
of the bill.

Rep. Penny Bacchiochi, a Republican lawmaker from Connecticut, told
members of the House Government Operations Committee that her husband
was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer in 1982.

"I watched him waste away," she said.

In the final three years before his 1994 death, she illegally bought
marijuana on the street for him. The drug didn't cure him but "he was
able to laugh, able to regain a quality of life."

Eleven states -- Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine,
Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington -- have
adopted laws to provide pot for patients with cancer, glaucoma, AIDS
and other serious medical conditions.

Most laws were put on the books by a vote of the people, not
legislative action.

Rep. Lamar Lemmons III, D-Detroit, the main sponsor of the bill, said
he expects Michigan voters to be presented with the medical marijuana
question in 2008.

Tuesday's action followed approval Monday by the Board of State
Canvassers of the form of a legislative petition proposal that would
make it legal for those 18 and older to use marijuana on private
property. Those found using the drug in public would be guilty of a
civil infraction punishable by a $50 fine.

The measure is proposed for the 2008 statewide ballot.

Scott Burns, the deputy White House drug czar, flew in from
Washington to oppose the bill.

He said the Food and Drug Administration, which for the last century
has had the role of testing and approving new medications, has
determined that marijuana "does not meet existing standards of safety
and efficacy for modern medication."

Burns said legalized marijuana would send a confusing signal to the
nation's youth.