EUREKA PONDERS POT POLICY

EUREKA - Supervisors here have asked the Humboldt County Health Department
to work with the sheriff and district attorney to develop a program to
identify legitimate medical marijuana users.

They also voted 3-2, with supervisors Bonnie Neely and Paul Kirk
dissenting, to ask their legal staff to draft a medical marijuana
ordinance. Neely and Kirk said there is no immediate need for an ordinance,
and that a less formal program should be worked out first between law
officers and health officers.

District Attorney Terry Farmer and Sheriff Dennis Lewis both said they are
willing to work with the Health Department to devise a system for issuing
identity cards to people whose physicians have recommended marijuana as an
antidote to illnesses. The recommendations would have to come from a local
physician, or be confirmed by a local physician.

More difficult, they said, is the question of who will be permitted to grow
and distribute medical marijuana. Supervisors suggested that it be done
through the cannabis center in Arcata, which is regulated by that city's
police department.

Several advocates of a medical marijuana ordinance protested that sheriff's
deputies opposed to the concept are likely to sabotage any program not
backed by a county ordinance. They cited past disputes, and a recent raid
on a garden in Fieldbrook that was growing plants for the Arcata center,
and whose owner had informed officers that he was doing so.

Speakers said that discussions between county officials must include
patients and caregivers, if the program is to have any hope of success.
Until trust is established, they said, nobody will apply for the identity
cards.

Dr. George Jutila warned that few physicians are willing to prescribe
marijuana to patients, because its safety has not been established by the
Food and Drug Administration testing that other drugs must undergo.

The strength of marijuana products varies so greatly, he added, that there
is no sure way to control dosage, as is done with other pharmaceuticals.

The board majority passed on to County Counsel Tamara Falor a proposed
ordinance drafted by the advisory committee charged with studying means to
bring the county into compliance with the 1996 voter-passed initiative.
That proposal was reworded from an earlier draft, to take into account
legal objections Falor raised in a report to the board in September.

The proposed ordinance defines who is to be considered a qualified patient
or a primary caregiver for the purposes of cultivating and providing
medical marijuana, and establishes conditions for the cultivation,
transportation and distribution of medical marijuana.

Farmer in past has stressed his concern that medical marijuana provisions
are likely to be widely abused by non-medical drug users. But on Tuesday he
said county officials are near agreement on acceptable rules.

"There's a good deal of consensus now," he said. "I think we can come up
with a program -- certainly we're much further along."