BATTLE LINES BLURRED IN WAR OVER MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Until now, the fight to decriminalize marijuana and make it available to
cancer, AIDS and other patients has taken root in famously liberal venues
such as Santa Cruz, Mendocino County and the San Francisco Bay Area.

That changed when the San Diego City Council, on a 6-3 vote that followed
hours of emotional testimony with protests on both sides, acquiesced to
dozens of people who pleaded for safe access to a drug they say eases
painful side effects of chronic diseases.

The unlikely vote came during the same week that jurors in a Bay Area
illegal cultivation case complained they were duped by a federal court and a
San Diego marijuana activist pleaded guilty to a felony rather than risk
years in prison.

All three developments have blurred the battle lines in the war on drugs.

Although more than a dozen California cities and counties have adopted
medicinal marijuana provisions, San Diego is one of the nation's largest and
most influential local governments yet to reject federal marijuana policy
and enact standards of its own.

"San Diego is solid middle America, with a lot of military and a lot of
conservative politics," said R. Keith Stroup, a public-interest attorney who
founded the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "This is
very significant."

The council members were acting on a proposition approved by California
voters in 1996 that permits seriously ill patients to grow and use marijuana
with the recommendation of a physician.

The state law, however, is deliberately vague on issues such as how many
plants and how much dried marijuana is acceptable, in part because the law
clearly clashes with federal drug rules. The U.S. government considers
marijuana to be as dangerous as heroin.

Activists on both sides of the debate see the San Diego case as something of
a turning point in the cause.

People who want to loosen the federal position on marijuana hope to
capitalize on the vote, figuring that if conservative-leaning San Diego can
accept marijuana use by sick patients, other cities are likely to follow.

Those active in drug abuse prevention see it as a call to arms; they feel
they lost the fight in a city like San Diego by taking their competition too
lightly or not paying close enough attention.

"Nobody believed it would happen," said John Redman of the San Diego
Prevention Coalition, an alliance of drug counselors and others that lobbied
furiously against the local marijuana guidelines. "It's illegal."

Marijuana activists were too practiced and organized for the anti-drug-abuse
coalition to have dissuaded San Diego lawmakers, Redman said. "We came on
board way too late in the game," he said.

A council-appointed citizens committee spent nearly two years debating
whether and how the state law allowing medicinal use of marijuana should be
dealt with in San Diego.

Task force members decided patients should be able to grow plants outdoors
and smoke anywhere cigarettes are permitted. They also said medicinal users
should be able to possess three pounds of marijuana and cultivate up to 72
plants.

Those recommendations were pared to one pound and 20 plants - grown indoors
or inside a greenhouse only. Less-lenient restrictions also were added to
prevent minors and convicts from taking advantage of the guidelines.

One AIDS patient from Ocean Beach who tends a small marijuana garden in his
yard welcomed the city law but said that conditions imposed by the council
present serious challenges.

The back yard "is the only place I really have to grow," said the man, who
did not want his name published out of fear that he would be arrested.
"Growing indoors involves lots of lights and, with the electricity bills, I
couldn't afford that."

The ordinance, which went into effect immediately, was strongly opposed by
San Diego police, and by U.S. drug officials, who pledged to continue
enforcing all laws.

Law professor Gerald Uelmen of Santa Clara University has been pushing
federal courts to render a decisive ruling on the legality of Proposition
215, the 1996 initiative that spawned California's medicinal marijuana
position.

According to Uelmen, who represents the operators of a cooperative marijuana
garden in Santa Cruz raided by federal drug agents last September, the U.S.
government has no business interfering with a state's right to develop a
marijuana policy of its own choosing.

The respected constitutional law expert has made only limited headway so far
- - a fact he partly attributes to his whereabouts.

"When we approve (medicinal marijuana laws) up here in the Bay Area, they
just shrug it off as more lunacy from the lunatic fringe," Uelmen said. "But
I don't think they can say that with San Diego."

The top law enforcement official in California also endorsed the San Diego
action. Attorney General Bill Lockyer has been feuding with his federal
counterpart, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, over his state's authority
to regulate marijuana.

Lockyer earlier took the unusual step of recommending that locally elected
officials develop their own standards on medicinal marijuana use.

"We think it's very good that local communities are making decisions on how
to implement something the voters of California believe is very important,"
said Hallye Jordan, a spokeswoman for Lockyer.

Eight states in addition to California have enacted allowances for medicinal
marijuana. Several others are weighing similar measures in upcoming
legislative sessions.

Federal officials, however, remain unmoved by the mounting number of cities,
counties and states allowing seriously ill patients to grow and smoke the
banned substance, even though the policy contradicts President Bush's
oft-repeated support for states' rights.

"We don't do science and medicine in this country by plebiscite," said Tom
Riley, a spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy. "We have well-regulated, well-run, science-based processes for
determining and distributing medicines."

The Justice Department also dismissed the concerns of jurors in Northern
California who last week convicted a popular marijuana advocate of illegal
cultivation.

When told after their verdict that defendant Ed Rosenthal had been growing
the plants for sick patients on behalf of the city of Oakland - information
that was excluded by the federal judge - several jurors complained publicly
that they were misled by the government.

At the same time, San Diego activist Steven McWilliams pleaded guilty to a
felony Friday rather than risk five years in federal prison for growing 25
marijuana plants at his Normal Heights home.

Under that deal, McWilliams could receive six months in jail and spend three
years on federal probation. However, in a highly unusual stipulation,
prosecutors agreed to allow McWilliams to argue the constitutionality of his
case before a federal appeals court.

With more town halls and statehouses considering medicinal marijuana laws
that conflict with federal drug policy, U.S. lawmakers might soon have
little choice but to weigh a measure of their own, advocates say.

So far, however, efforts in Congress to reclassify marijuana as a less
dangerous substance have gone nowhere, largely because many politicians fear
being painted as soft on drugs.

"They are not afraid of the voters," said Eric E. Sterling, president of the
Criminal Justice Policy Foundation in suburban Washington, D.C. "They are
afraid of the conventional wisdom and afraid of being ridiculed."