OAKLAND CANNABIS CLUB DEFENDING POT THERAPY AT SUPREME COURT

A few years ago, an author writing about death asked ailing AIDS patient
Michael Alcalay how he was accepting dying.

``I'm not accepting it,'' Alcalay retorted.

Today, he's alive to tell that story thanks in part, he believes, to
judicious doses of marijuana, the unorthodox medical approach endorsed by
California's Proposition 215.

On March 28, Alcalay will be in the audience as lawyers try to convince the
Supreme Court that federal drug bans shouldn't come between patients and
the marijuana that may be the only thing that can help their medical problems.

It's unclear whether the Supreme Court will rule on marijuana as medicine
in general or limit themselves to a narrower look at judicial proceedings
in the case. But a ruling of ``Yes'' on advocates' arguments that marijuana
is a medical necessity lead to widespread use of pot therapy in the nine
states that have passed similar laws.

Proposition 215 passed easily in 1996 but has been in limbo as county
officials try to pick their way through a thicket of opposing state and
federal laws.

``Once the justices recognize what's really at stake in this case, if any
semblance of justice prevails then so will we,'' says attorney Robert
Raich, who is representing the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative.

The Oakland club was one of six sued by the U.S. Justice Department after
the passage of Proposition 215, which allows people to have marijuana on a
doctor's recommendation. A federal judge shut the club down, but an
appellate court reversed that.

While the case worked its way through the courts, California's political
landscape transformed.

In 1996, then-California Attorney General Dan Lungren, a Republican, was
lampooned in the comic strip Doonesbury for ordering a raid on a San
Francisco club distributing marijuana for medical purposes. This year,
Lungren's successor, Democrat Bill Lockyer has filed court papers backing
the use of medical marijuana.

``Night and day,'' says a relieved Jeff Jones, executive director of the
Oakland club.

Jones founded the Oakland club after watching his father take the long,
slow road to death by cancer. In the early days, volunteers would deliver
marijuana by bicycle. Today, the club has the firm support of local
officials and operates out of a clean, well-lighted storefront that has a
clinical air, far removed from a head shop's muggy gloom. The club, which
has not distributed marijuana in recent years because of a court order
forbidding it, has even explored the possibility of paying sales taxes.

Advocates say marijuana is a reliable and nontoxic therapy that stimulates
appetite, eases pain and wards off the nauseous side-effects of treatments
such as chemotherapy.

Alcalay, a 59-year-old physician who serves as the club's medical director,
started using marijuana medically to keep down his pills after he was
diagnosed with HIV in the 1980s. HIV turned into AIDS and in the mid-'90s
Alcalay almost died after he picked up an intestinal bug that ran roughshod
over his weakened immune system. The disease stripped 35 pounds off his
165-pound, 5-foot-10 frame and left him so miserably sick he would lie in
bed for a week mustering the strength to get up and do laundry.

He hung on, regularly taking small doses of marijuana -- generally no more
than two puffs. ``I don't like getting stoned. I like to be in control,''
he says. The pot turned meals delivered by volunteers from something
nausea-inducing to ``the best thing you ever saw.''

He lasted long enough to by put back on his feet by the advent of the
powerful combination drugs that revolutionized the treatment of AIDS.

Justice Department lawyers declined comment. They have argued that allowing
clubs to hand out marijuana compromises the government's ability to enforce
federal drug laws.

In an interesting sidelight, Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer has
recused himself from the case, because his brother, Charles Breyer, was the
federal district judge who first handled the case.

Alcalay isn't sure if the Supreme Court will support pot therapy. But he
thinks it should.

``Marijuana kept me alive,'' he says.

As it turns out, Alcalay didn't make it into the book about dying, although
he did run into the author the other day.

``He was surprised to see me,'' Alcalay says with a laugh.