WHAT A LONG, STRANGE TRIP FOR STATE'S MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAW

Ten years after California voters approved Proposition 215, a
landmark medical marijuana law, many qualified patients still run a
gantlet of federal drug agents and hostile police and prosecutors.

This year, DEA agents, assisted by local law enforcement agencies,
have busted dozens of storefront cannabis dispensaries, while city
councils across the state have voted to prohibit the facilities.

Proposition 215 meant to exempt patients from prosecution for
possession of medical marijuana with a doctor's approval. But elected
officials have been reluctant to implement a measure that conflicts
with federal law and is still largely opposed by the state's law
enforcement community.

Earlier this year, San Diego County supervisors sued to overturn the
voter initiative, as well as a 2003 statute that required counties to
make voluntary ID cards available to patients and caregivers, and
established minimum plant and possession guidelines. San Bernardino
and Merced county supervisors have voted to join the suit in San
Diego Superior Court. Attorneys with the ACLU and drug-policy groups
will represent the patients when the case is heard Nov. 16.

Even if many of its goals remain unrealized, the Compassionate Use
Act of 1996 spawned a grassroots political movement that is gaining
momentum despite opposition from local, state and federal authorities.

As many as a quarter-million Californians have obtained physician
approval to use medical marijuana. As Dr. Stephen Ellis, a San
Francisco cannabis consultant, put it, cannabis is not a miracle drug
pushed by pharmaceutical companies but a traditional folk medicine
rediscovered by patients who use it.

Scientific interest has grown, too. In the decade since 56 percent of
California voters passed Proposition 215, thousands of medical
studies have been published about cannabinoids, the compounds unique
to marijuana, and the role they play in human health.

Public acceptance also has increased. A 2004 Field Poll showed that
nearly three out of four Californians support a patient's ability to
choose marijuana as their medicine. Eleven other states and the
District of Columbia followed California's lead and have approved
medical marijuana laws. All of the states limit use to a shorter list
of medical conditions than California's activist-written measure, and
none has created a public distribution system.

Since Senate Bill 420, carried by former Sen. John Vasconcellos,
D-Santa Clara, allowed patients to form cooperatives, more than 200
storefront dispensaries and delivery services have opened across the
state, many in previously unthinkable jurisdictions. With a
physician's recommendation, patients outside of the Bay Area for the
first time now can exercise choice in how they obtain medical marijuana.

Few of the gains came easily after the passage of Proposition 215.
Unfortunately, implementation of the controversial law would fall to
the same California police and prosecutors who campaigned against the measure.

Days after the initiative passed, a delegation of California law
enforcement officials huddled with federal anti-drug officials in
Washington, D.C., to coordinate a response. Two weeks later in
Sacramento, then-Attorney General Dan Lungren met with 300 California
law enforcement officials, including district attorneys, police
chiefs, sheriffs and narcotics officers, in Sacramento. Lungren
declared that the law should be applied "as narrowly as possible" and
gave the green light to arrest marijuana growers and prosecute them
for cultivation. Lungren's office maintained that the new law
provided only an "affirmative defense" for marijuana suspects to
invoke at trial, an interpretation the state Supreme Court declined to review.

Enforcement varied dramatically across the state's 58 counties. Where
ballot support was strongest, patients could purchase medical
marijuana from storefront dispensaries that sprang up before
Proposition 215 passed. But an hour or so from San Francisco, police
continued to arrest patients and caregivers. Some of the sick,
impoverished by chronic illnesses, were hauled into court, where they
pleaded guilty to felony charges in exchange for light sentences.

The fortunes of the patients, caregivers and doctors waxed and waned
with court decisions and turnover of state and federal officeholders.
The Clinton administration launched anti-marijuana advertising with
an annual budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, threatened
physicians who approved medical marijuana and filed suits against
cannabis dispensaries. The Bush administration followed with more
raids against dispensaries and more criminal prosecutions.

Veteran state lawmaker Bill Lockyer succeeded Lungren as California's
attorney general in 1998, and defended the Compassionate Use Act with
an amicus brief in a U.S. Supreme Court case brought by two
California patients. More sympathetic to medical marijuana, Lockyer
appointed a stakeholders group of advocates and law enforcement
opponents to hash out an implementation bill, something the polarized
factions could not manage before the passage of SB 420 five years
later. Until an embattled Gov. Gray Davis signed SB 420 in 2003,
Lockyer declined to issue new guidelines on possession and cultivation.

As the number of arrests by state and federal authorities grew,
patients networked, protested and planned emergency responses. In
early 2003, Americans for Safe Access gave the federal government a
public-relations black eye, convincing Bay Area jurors to denounce
their own guilty verdict in the trial of pot cultivation expert Ed
Rosenthal. The Oakland-based advocacy group has since used persuasion
and the threat of litigation to win concessions from recalcitrant
state agencies and local jurisdictions.

With SB 420, locally elected officials have been drawn into the
conflict. City and county governments are confronting Proposition
215's call for "safe and affordable distribution of marijuana" in
weighing whether to regulate or prohibit cannabis dispensaries.
Nearly a hundred jurisdictions have prohibited marijuana outlets, but
three dozen cities and counties have adopted ordinances to regulate
their operation.

California law enforcement associations have lobbied against the
facilities, citing federal law. Some in the state's law enforcement
community have grudgingly accepted the reality, if not the
desirability, of medical marijuana. Others remain opposed to the very
notion, preferring to view dispensaries and caregivers as traffickers.

"There is no justification for using marijuana as a medicine,"
declares a position paper on the Web site of the 7,000-member
California Narcotics Officers Association.

As the U.S. Supreme Court noted in its 2005 ruling in the California
case, only Congress can amend the Controlled Substances Act to
declare a cease-fire in the nation's war on medical marijuana.

A decision in San Diego's lawsuit may settle whether state agencies
- -- including police and prosecutors -- must comply with a state law
that conflicts with federal law. Appeals will likely delay the
outcome for years. But after a decade, it's time California law
enforcement officers stop siding with the feds and defend the state law.

And lawmakers should adopt sensible regulations for dispensing
medical marijuana so local and state officials can honor the intent
of voters: Protect patients and provide them safe and affordable
access to their medicine.