MEDICAL MARIJUANA MEASURE MASKS LARGER FAILURE OF VISION

County supervisors made a cautious move this week that should provide
some help to medical marijuana users without taking the county onto
shaky legal ground.

The U.S. Supreme Court eventually will rule on California's
Proposition 215, and it makes no sense for the county to anticipate
their decision.

The Public Health Department will issue identification cards to
medical marijuana users who can produce a legitimate recommendation
from a licensed physician -- doctors can't actually "prescribe"
marijuana, because it's a herbal remedy, not part of the recognized
pharmacopoeia. The county policy includes restrictions to reduce (it
cannot eliminate) the likelihood that the cards will be abused.

What the county did not do is resolve the greatest source of present
controversy, by specifying how much marijuana a patient may legally
possess, or a "provider" may grow. This will continue to be left to
the judgment of individual police officers, following a departmental
rule-of-thumb. Most are not likely to err on the side of generosity.

That means we will continue to hear angry complaints -- some of them
perhaps legitimate -- about confiscated pot. A few of these have
involved growers who seem to be genuinely trying to comply with the
law, and who feel they were punished for their honesty.

The medical marijuana initiative, unfortunately, opened the door to
massive abuse.

Suddenly California was full of invalids who could only find relief in
a reefer, and of growers who were selflessly willing to supply scores
of such unfortunates with "medicine." Few of them had much difficulty
finding a healer of some description who would attest to their medical
need.

There are, in fact, rather few physical conditions for which marijuana
is the remedy of choice.

It is not a cure, but primarily a pain reliever.

Some sufferers say they experience fewer harsh side effects from it
than from other pain-killing drugs.

Now marijuana is not a particularly dangerous drug (certainly less so
than alcohol and nicotine) and there is no reason why those few
cancer, glaucoma and AIDS patients who really would benefit from it
should not have it. California voters recognized this when they passed
Prop 215 in 1996, and county officials are moving cautiously but, we
believe, sincerely to make it possible.

We do not for a moment, however, believe that all or even most of the
advocates of medical marijuana are sufferers who cannot obtain relief
by any other means.

Some are people who enjoy smoking pot, or who wish to profit from
growing and selling the plant, who have seized on this means to obtain
its partial legalization.

While there are valid arguments against legalizing marijuana, it might
make more sense to regulate, control and tax it like tobacco and
alcohol than to condone hypocrisy of this sort. We have been trying to
suppress marijuana for almost a century, with no result but a great
expenditure of public funds that might have been put to better use.
The experience with alcohol prohibition in the 1920s should have been
a sufficient lesson in futility.

The certainty of political retaliation almost precludes any public
official from admitting the failure of present policies or openly
discussing more workable alternatives. We are apparently fated to
remain locked into our present state of mutually agreed denial.

And government officials, doctors, lawyers, police and pot growers
will all continue their solemn ceremonial dance around a sad handful
of seriously ill people.