BILL CALLS FOR MEDICINAL-MARIJUANA CENTER

AUGUSTA -- Cliff Hall uses marijuana to relieve his suffering from deep and
painful muscle spasms. He has grown it and he has bought it on the black
market. But Hall, who suffers from a long-standing spinal-cord injury,
figures the best source has yet to be tapped. That's where the Legislature
comes in.

A proposed bill would establish a pilot program to distribute marijuana to
Mainers who need it for medical reasons. Supporters include the 42-year-old
Hall, who listed his address as western Maine so the federal government
won't zero in on him in its war against drugs.

The bill, which is still being drafted, would create a nonprofit center to
grow and distribute marijuana within a test county. The center, to be run
by a community board, would create and operate a registry system for
patients, to ensure that it only sells marijuana to those who are legally
entitled to it.

"If it was done properly, everyone would benefit from it," said Hall, who
has a doctor's written recommendation that he use marijuana. "It would take
the stigma away from me having to go to the black market," while ensuring
that the quality is consistent from batch to batch.

State-sanctioned distribution is "a very necessary part of what the public
approved in the referendum," Hall said.

It was more than a year ago that Maine voters passed a law legalizing the
medicinal use of marijuana. The law allows Mainers who have been diagnosed
with any of several specific conditions, including problems stemming from
cancer chemotherapy or AIDS, to possess six marijuana plants and an ounce
and a quarter of dried marijuana.

What the law does not provide is a distribution system for people who are
too sick or too poor to grow marijuana, those who cannot grow it fast
enough and those who can't or won't buy it illegally. As a result, Hall and
other supporters of the law say, the state should sanction legally
recognized cultivation and distribution centers.

That was one of the ideas backed by a state task force created last year to
recommend improvements in the law. In a report released last October, most
of the 29 people on the task force endorsed state-sanctioned distribution.
Many members also supported creating a research program on the medical
benefits of marijuana and allowing each legal user to grow enough for one
other registered patient.

So far, at least, the only one of those ideas that has surfaced in the
Legislature is the pilot distribution plan.

An early draft of the bill says the distribution center could grow
marijuana and charge patients enough to cover costs. The center could not
buy marijuana outside the state and it would have to work with the sheriff
in the center's home county to set up and maintain a registry of eligible
patients.

The bill does not specify which county would get the center. Eventually,
the center would have to submit a report to the Legislature, which would
then decide whether to expand the idea to other counties.

"We really haven't provided a way to (distribute marijuana) that is legal,"
so the Legislature should tackle the problem with a test program in one
county, said Sen. Anne Rand, D-Portland, a sponsor of the bill.

"The referendum was a good step," said Elizabeth Beane of Mainers for
Medical Rights, which promoted the referendum and supports the new law.
"Growing your own seemed like the way to go" at the time, Beane said, but
it has become clear since then that home growing is not practical for all
patients who are entitled to the drug.

Hall notes, for example, that Maine's short growing season is problematic
and growing marijuana indoors can be an expensive proposition. Moreover, he
said, wildlife can decimate an outdoor crop and insect infestation can wipe
out an indoor planting.

With a state-mandated limit of six plants, only three of which can be
flowering and ready for processing, the grower has little margin for error.
And some patients are too sick to cultivate their own plants, while others
cannot grow marijuana quickly enough. That happens, for example, if a
patient gets very short notice before starting chemotherapy and needs the
drug right away.

As for the only currently available alternative, "it's not easy to find
good quality marijuana on the black market," Hall said.

Still, the task force split on state-approved distribution, which is sure
to face some opposition in the Legislature.

"Clearly, it presents tremendous issues," said Roy McKinney, director of
the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency and one of the dissenters on the task force.

The federal government still views marijuana as a narcotic that is easily
abused and that has no medical benefits, McKinney said, so "the issue of
conflict with federal law" would pose problems if the state sanctioned a
distribution system.

In addition, McKinney said, "there would have to be a tremendous amount of
oversight" to monitor how much marijuana the center grows, how it is
distributed and whether all of the recipients are legally entitled to get
it under state law.

"It would take a huge bureaucracy just to take care of those three issues,"
McKinney said. If one or more distribution centers are needed to make the
new law work properly, he said, supporters of the referendum should have
included such provisions in the referendum before it was submitted to the
voters in 1999.