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.