MARIJUANA AMENDMENT PASSING

Voters solidly supported Amendment 20, allowing medicinal use of marijuana.

Polls had showed voters favoring the constitutional amendment allowing
certain chronically ill patients to smoke marijuana.

But even with the amendment passing, it will still be illegal for the
patients to get the drug.

This contradiction is the result of the halfway measure taken in Amendment
20. It allows certain patients suffering chronic pain or nausea to have and
use small amounts of marijuana. But amendment provides no way for the
otherwise illegal drug to be obtained by these patients.

Therein lies the promise for some interesting court battles that are being
played out in skirmishes elsewhere around the United States.

"We call it the drug dealers' full-employment amendment," said Dr. Joel
Karlin, a physician who was active in the opposition campaign.

Coloradans - who authorities acknowledge already have one of the highest
rates of pot use in the country - previously approved a constitutional
amendment allowing some people to smoke marijuana if their doctors think it
might help them ease pain or nausea from AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis
or other illnesses. But a legal battle struck the measure down.

Martin Chilcutt, a retired California psychotherapist who moved to Denver
six years ago, was the initiator of the amendment drive in 1996.

He took a back seat during the recent campaign after working through
political and legal battles that forced him off the 1998 ballot, and then
back on it for this year.

He hopes to address the availability issue by forming a Cannabis
Cooperative, which would help organize the folks legally entitled to
possess and use the substance into a group that would cultivate and
distribute marijuana.

"I was very grateful for the opportunity to work with these people,"
Chilcutt said of the numerous terminally ill patients he counseled over the
years. "It made me realize it's their quality of life and their
relationships that matter."

Julie Roche, who ran the pro-marijuana campaign, said the onset of
television and radio ads in the last two weeks by opponents softened
support somewhat, while the pro-20 campaign ended up with a lower than
anticipated advertising budget.

"We decided to put it all into TV in the last week," said Roche. Her ad
used a Breckenridge doctor, "Dr. P.J.," telling viewers that he has seen
the ravages of chemotherapy on cancer patients and would like to see
marijuana smoking available as an option to build appetite.

Tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, the principal active ingredient in marijuana,
is known to reduce nausea and pain.

The opponents ads tried to capitalize on the fact that Amendment 20's
financial backers are part of a nationwide movement with the goal of
legalizing some if not all drugs.

Medical marijuana, opponents said, was just a foot in the door for
increased substance abuse. Synthetic THC has been marketed in pill form,
although marijuana proponents say it is not as effective and in some cases
worse on patients. It is soon coming out in a skin-patch form.

Karlin said calling smoked marijuana "medicine" is a hoax. It's never been
established through rigorous testing as a medicine and because of the wide
varieties available on the street, it can't be properly administered in
consistent dosages or strengths.

Last week's tightening of the polls on Amendment 20 gave Karlin and
Coloradans Against Legalizing Marijuana the shot they hoped for.

"We have the highest number of recreational marijuana users in the country
here in Colorado, so that was working against us," he said.

Since early 1998, Coloradans for Medical Rights, which pushed the measure,
raised $742,758. Nearly all of it came from Americans for Medical Rights, a
Santa Monica, Calif., group bankrolled principally by three wealthy men who
have a larger agenda of ending the government's War on Drugs.

They are financier and philanthropist George Soros of New York, Progressive
Auto Insurance head Peter B. Lewis of Cleveland, and John Sperling, founder
of the University of Phoenix program.

The opponents raised $144,634, most in small local contributions but with
the single largest one coming from Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, who
gave $25,000. Centura Health was the second-largest giver at $9,000.