MEDICAL MARIJUANA ADVOCATE BLASTS NEVADA RESEARCH PLAN

CARSON CITY, Nev. - A medical marijuana
advocate said Wednesday that Nevada officials are in for a fight if
they try to limit a voter-endorsed initiative allowing use of
marijuana by cancer, AIDS and glaucoma victims.

Question 9 was approved by a 2-to-1 margin in November, and the 2001
Legislature is required to set up a distribution method so people with
such medical conditions can use marijuana for pain relief.

But a task force of medical experts instead recommended a research
program to permit limited marijuana distribution and avoid a
confrontation with the federal government's anti-marijuana laws that
conflict with the state initiative.

Dan Hart, who led the effort to get the constitutional amendment on
medical marijuana approved by voters, said in a letter to the state
Board of Pharmacy, which was involved in the task force effort, that
the research plan is too restrictive.

Hart wrote Louis Ling, a deputy attorney general and the board's
general counsel, that the research project could exclude some
qualified, terminally ill patients and instead get medical marijuana
only to ``a chosen few.''

``Who will you choose, Mr. Ling,'' Hart said. ``What patient will you
deny their rights under the state Constitution? Which physician will
you notify that their constitutional right to approve the treatment of
their patient has been denied by your ad hoc 'research' approval
committee?''

``Rest assured that the proponents of Question 9 will vigorously
defend the will of the people in the Legislature, the executive branch
and in every necessary court, including the court of public opinion,''
Hart added.

The report criticized by Hart came from the Nevada Medical Marijuana
Initiative Work Group, formed last year after Nevada voters in 1998
passed the ballot initiative a first time. The initiative passed a
second time in November and now becomes part of the Nevada
Constitution.

The group issued its recommendations as guidelines to Gov. Kenny Guinn
and the Legislature, which also will be considering bills to reduce
the felony penalty for possession of a small amount of marijuana.

The group recommended the formation of a committee of health care
professionals. Doctors or medical groups could apply to the committee
for permission to study marijuana's effects.

If the committee sanctions the plan, the research proposal would have
to receive federal approval from the Drug Enforcement Administration,
the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute of Drug
Abuse.

``Marijuana would be purchased by the research study through federally
approved providers,'' the report says. ``Marijuana would not be grown,
processed or manufactured in Nevada. The federally approved provider
would provide uniform, predictable and uncontaminated marijuana, thus
protecting patients from the vagaries of illegal or homegrown
marijuana.''

The physician conducting the research would write the prescription and
it would be filled by participating pharmacies that would purchase
marijuana from the federal government.

This plan, said the work group, ``would allow physicians, not state
bureaucrats, to decide which patients would have access to marijuana
for medical purposes.''