MEDICAL MARIJUANA ADVOCATE: VOTERS' WISHES THWARTED

An advocate for medical marijuana said Wednesday the attorney general's
office wants to thwart the wishes of Nevada voters by blocking access to pot
to qualified patients.

Dan Hart, director of Nevadans for Medical Rights, said the attorney
general's office and the Medical Marijuana Initiative Committee want to make
marijuana available only to a chosen few, instead of all sufferers of AIDS,
cancer and other illnesses.

In a letter to former Deputy Attorney General Louis Ling, Hart said the
committee's plan to set up a University of Nevada medical school research
study on marijuana is not what the voters intended when they passed Question
9 in November.

Sixty-five percent of voters approved a constitutional amendment that
requires the Legislature in 2001 to set up a registry program whereby
qualified sick people with a physician's authorization can receive
marijuana.

Hart's organization, a subsidiary of Americans for Medical Rights,
successfully put the medical marijuana issue on the ballot and passed it
during two consecutive statewide elections. Nine states now have medical
marijuana laws.

The Medical Marijuana Initiative Committee, a group of doctors and
pharmacists who are trying to determine how to carry out the initiative
without incurring litigation, proposed last month to have the medical school
conduct a marijuana study rather than have a statewide marijuana
distribution program.

Ling now is private legal adviser to the state Board of Pharmacy, whose
executive secretary, Keith MacDonald, co-founded the Medical Marijuana
Initiative Committee.

MacDonald said the research project might secure federal approval and help
the state avoid the protracted litigation from U.S. drug authorities.

He also proposed the University of Nevada's agricultural farm could grow
marijuana and then medical school doctors could distribute it to patients as
part of a research project on the drug's effects.

In his letter, Hart said it is clear most doctors and health care officials
on the committee oppose medical marijuana.

According to Hart, one of his staff members attended a committee hearing and
committee members accused him of being "either a dealer in illicit
narcotics" or of having a "real estate interest in a marijuana plantation."

Even before the Medical Marijuana Initiative Committee made its final
recommendation, Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa backed the research
study and said legislators would invite trouble by creating a marijuana
distribution program without federal approval.

She said Nevada should not rush into a distribution program until after the
U.S. Supreme Court makes a ruling on such programs.

The court will decide soon whether the Oakland, Calif., Cannabis Buyers'
Cooperative can distribute marijuana to its members.

"The Supreme Court is going to make a ruling that will probably be
definitive on this issue," said Tina Leiss, a Nevada deputy attorney
general. "It is going to give the state a lot of guidance on what they can
do and cannot do."

Despite federal opposition to medical marijuana, Hart is not aware of any
arrest of a doctor who authorized marijuana for a patient in a state with a
medical marijuana law.