PANEL PITCHES CITY ID CARDS FOR MEDICAL POT USERS

Sick people who use marijuana to relieve symptoms on their doctors' advice
could get city identification cards to protect them from arrest by San
Diego police under a plan recommended by a City Council committee yesterday.

The proposal endorsed on a 4-1 vote by the Public Safety & Neighborhood
Services Committee runs contrary to advice from police Chief David
Bejarano, who said the city should first determine if there is a need for a
city ID card.

"I am convinced that there is need," said Councilwoman Toni Atkins,
chairwoman of the committee.

If there wasn't a need, Atkins said, California voters would not have
approved Proposition 215, the 1996 measure allowing the medical use of
marijuana.

Atkins said her goal is to bring the proposal to the full council for a
vote by the end of the year.

Bejarano, in a memo to the committee, said he "generally supports the
concept of a medical marijuana identification card system." But he
questioned the need for a city program.

Over the past two years, he wrote, the police have encountered only 12
cases in which people found with marijuana said they used it for medicinal
purposes. Of those, he said, five were found to be legitimate medical
marijuana users.

The chief said any ID card program should be run by the San Diego County
Health Department rather than by the city.

But Councilman Ralph Inzunza Jr. said a city ID card program is needed
because county officials have declined to start one.

"We, as a city, have to step forward," Inzunza said.

Proposed state legislation would establish a statewide ID card program.

But Dale Kelly Bankhead, a member of the city's Medical Marijuana Task
Force, said the city shouldn't wait for the state to act.

"We cannot predict what will happen in Sacramento," Bankhead said. "In the
meantime, folks in San Diego don't have the mechanism to prevent
unnecessary arrests."

In establishing the ID card program, Inzunza said, the city also must amend
local ordinances to make it a crime to copy, sell, counterfeit or otherwise
abuse the cards. He said the city also must establish limits on how much
marijuana a cardholder could have.

Atkins said the city also must make it clear that a city ID card wouldn't
protect medical marijuana users from arrest by federal, state or county law
enforcement agencies, nor would it be valid beyond city limits.

Under the committee proposal, which was developed by the citizens task
force, the ID card program would be administered by a nonprofit medical
agency. The task force was created by the council in May to develop
guidelines on implementing Proposition 215.

Councilman Brian Maienschein, who voted against the proposal, said the city
should wait until the courts resolve a conflict between state law, which
allows medical marijuana use, and federal law, which prohibits it.

"There's still some issues that need to be worked out by the courts, and
for us to get ahead of these I don't think is wise," Maienschein said.

Atkins and Inzunza said San Francisco and several other California cities
and counties have ID card programs.