S.D. LAWMAKERS BACK MEDICINAL USE OF POT

Sick people who want to use marijuana to ease their symptoms won
support yesterday from a San Diego City Council committee. City
Councilman Ralph Inzunza Jr. said the city must "begin to push this
process now."

Inzunza and his colleagues on the Public Safety and Neighborhood
Services Committee voted unanimously to create a task force o
determine how the city might help implement Proposition 215 - a 1996
state ballot initiative that allows the medical use of marijuana. The
task force would be appointed by Mayor Dick Murphy and other council
members and would include police, patients, doctors and others who
work with health care.

The council committee set a 90-day deadline for the committee to be
appointed and produce a preliminary report.

"It's going to be an aggressive schedule as much as possible," said
committee chairman Toni Atkins.

The task force's duties would include monitoring actions by other
agencies, including a law enforcement work group on Proposition 215
formed last year by District Attorney Paul Pfingst. The decision to
create the task force was prompted in pat by please yesterday from
people who said marijuana helped relieve their symptoms or those of
family members when other medications had failed. Cancer patient Ann
Shanahan Walsh said marijuana-laced cookies she got from a San
Francisco clinic through a friend were the only thing that eased
nausea and restored her appetite when she was undergoing
chemotherapy.

"I was so desperately ill because the traditional drugs they give
cancer patients just weren't working," Shanahan Walsh said. Susan
McNichols said marijuana has been the only medication that reduced the
seizures and other ailments her son continues to suffer from an auto
accident he was in 11 years ago. "for the first time since his auto
accident, I see hope and joy in my son," McNichols said.

Critics have contended that allowing marijuana to be used for medical
purposes would encourage drug abuse.

But council members said they saw no connection between the two. "I do
not support the use of marijuana for recreational purposes. However,
I do support the use of marijuana for medical use," said Councilman
George Stevens.

Although Proposition 215 allows the personal use of marijuana for
medical reasons, it does not eliminate other laws that make it a crime
to possess or sell marijuana, nor does it affect federal laws against
the drug.

That contradiction has left police and government agencies in a
quandary.

Pfingst's work group was formed to develop guidelines for police
throughout San Diego County, clarifying who can use marijuana for
medical purposes and under what circumstances.

San Diego police have interpreted the law to mean that sick people or
their caretakers can grow small amounts of marijuana under a doctor's
instructions to ease pain and other medical symptoms. They have,
however, closed two centers that provided marijuana to sick people.