MARIJUANA FOR MEDICAL USE HAS STRONG SUPPORT IN POLLS

Medical marijuana is seen either as a compassionate concession to the pain
of the chronically ill or a stalking horse in the national campaign to
legalize drugs.

The battleground this year is Colorado, where a multi-million dollar
national movement to legalize the use of marijuana by people with cancer,
glaucoma, AIDS or other chronically painful illnesses goes before voters on
Nov. 7.

It was first proposed for the 1998 ballot but then-Secretary of State Vikki
Buckley kicked it off in an administrative decision that was later
overturned. Polls shows the constitutional amendment would pass by a
healthy majority if the election were today.

Last week, a Denver Rocky Mountain News-News4 poll showed the medical
marijuana initiative supported by 71 percent of registered voters, and
opposed by 23 percent. On the ballot, it is labeled Amendment 20.

Supporters say the therapeutic effect of marijuana on pain and nausea will
help patients put on weight and take the edge off chronic pain. To withhold
this option for lessening their suffering is a cruel side effect of a
futile war on drugs, they argue.

Opponents call it "medicine by popular vote."

Every other prescribed drug must be tested in scientifically rigorous
trials to ensure that it is safe and effective before it can be sold to the
public. But marijuana in smoked form has never been shown in controlled
scientific studies to be a safe or effective medicine.

If what patients want is the soothing effects of pot on their nausea,
opponents say, then they can take Marinol, a safer and more stable medicine
containing the active ingredient in marijuana that promotes appetite.

Marinol is the brand name for the synthetic form of tetrahydrocannabinol or
THC, the principal active ingredient in marijuana. It has been available
since its approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1985.

Other more effective and less risky medicines than Marinol also are being
developed.

The involvement of medical marijuana backers in other attempts to
decriminalize drug use has opponents saying this initiative is a disguised
effort to enact more permissive drug laws.

But those backing the measure insist it isn't a back-door first step to
legalizing other drugs for the general population. Marinol, they counter,
has serious side effects.

And forcing people to use Marinol rather than pot, they say, is a way of
keeping people dependent on the pharmaceutical industry rather than being
responsible for themselves.

"The amendment was written to limit the use of marijuana to the people who
really need it medically," said Julie Roche, a spokeswoman for the group
supporting the amendment, Coloradans for Medical Rights 2000.

"We never intended to go any further than to allow patients who were
possessing and using marijuana to do so legally," said Gina Pesulima,
spokeswoman for Americans for Medical Rights in Santa Monica, Calif.

The group is bankrolling the Colorado initiative, as it has in other
states. It in turn is backed primarily by three wealthy businessmen who are
sometimes called the "Daddy Warbucks" of the movement to end the 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. They are continuing the work of a
group of wealthy individuals who funded passage of the California medical
marijuana measure in 1996.

Soros has committed $15 million over a five-year period for projects that
explore alternatives to existing drug policies.

Lewis, 66, a trustee of Princeton University and director of the board of
the Guggenheim museums, was arrested in New Zealand in January and charged
with possession of less than four ounces total of marijuana and hashish. He
was entering the country to visit a daughter and to watch the America's Cup
regatta.

Lewis made a large donation to a drug treatment center in Auckland and the
charges were dropped the next day.

Narrowly written or not, the medical marijuana initiative is part of a
larger agenda of drug law reform. Soros, Lewis and Sperling also bankroll
the Campaign for New Drug Policies.

That group this year began using state initiatives to try to decriminalize
nonviolent drug offenses and change the current practice that allows the
seizure of drug users' property.

Sperling spearheaded the 1996 vote in Arizona that offered treatment
instead of jail to some drug users. With his two compatriots, they poured
$1.2 million into that campaign.

The Drug Reform Coordination Network of Washington, D.C., backs their efforts.

"The initiative process has become an effective tool for drug policy
reform, as evidenced by the medical marijuana initiative victories across
the country in 1996, 1998 and most recently in Maine in 1999," the group
wrote in a report earlier this year.

The Colorado initiative would allow specific patients to own and grow small
amounts of marijuana. They could have six plants, with no more than three
in flower at a time.

If they are not growing it themselves, patients can have up to two ounces
at a time. Anyone found to have more than that must prove the extra amount
is medically necessary.

To qualify for use, the patient must obtain a doctor's finding that he or
she might benefit from the use of marijuana. A state registry would be
created to qualify people for medical marijuana. Cards would be issued to
patients, who can show them to police if they are stopped for possession.

The amendment also protects one primary caregiver of the patient from
prosecution for marijuana possession. A primary caregiver must be at least
18 years old to qualify.

The amendment also protects doctors who advise patients to use marijuana.
To avoid running afoul of federal regulations, the law doesn't require
doctors to prescribe marijuana. They merely must discuss the risks and
benefits of marijuana with a patient and find that marijuana might benefit
that patient.

The amendment prohibits patients from using marijuana in public or in the
workplace.

The Colorado initiative, similar to one passed in Oregon in 1998, is
narrowly drawn to allow marijuana use only by a limited class of people,
namely those suffering from the effects of glaucoma, cancer, AIDS and other
chronic debilitating conditions, like epilepsy or multiple sclerosis.

While marijuana smoking helps ease the pain and nausea of treatments for
cancer and AIDS, and the effects of glaucoma and multiple sclerosis,
smoking marijuana is nevertheless opposed by many advocacy groups for
sufferers of those diseases.

The use of smoked marijuana as medicine is opposed by the American Medical
Association, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, The American Cancer
Society, the American Glaucoma Society and the American Academy of
Ophthalmology.

Dr. Joel Karlin, a Lakewood physician active in the opposition group
Coloradans Against Legalizing Marijuana, says it is safer and more
effective for patients to get on a regulated regimen of Marinol than to
rely on the variable quality of the many supplies of marijuana available
illegally on the streets.

"I know a number of oncologists (cancer physicians) who have said that
Marinol is much more effective for the purposes patients want," Karlin
said. "Smoked marijuana has abrupt action but it's gone in four hours. But
the duration of Marinol is eight to 12 hours, and they take it twice a day."

The U.S. Justice Department, which has battled the implementation of
medical marijuana initiatives in California and elsewhere, takes the
position that it is a harmful drug with more bad side-effects than
medicinal benefits.

The harmful consequences of smoking marijuana, the department says, include
cancer, addiction, coordination and perception impairment, various mental
disorders such as depression, hostility and increased aggressiveness,
general apathy and memory loss.

Studies show that HIV-positive marijuana smokers progress to full-blown
AIDS twice as fast as nonsmokers. They also have a higher rate of bacterial
pneumonia, according to the Justice Department.

Another problem opponents see is that while the initiative makes it legal
for certain patients to possess and use marijuana, it would still be
illegal for other people to sell or provide it to them.

In other words, patients could have their pot, but they couldn't get it
legally. Backers say they purposely left out of the amendment any legal
means for patients to obtain marijuana, preferring to go one step at a time.

In California, where a medical marijuana proposition passed in 1996, there
still is no legal way to obtain the substance. The U.S. Supreme Court
recently barred the Oakland, Calif., Cannabis Buyers Cooperative from
distributing marijuana to those claiming a medical need.

Instead, Roche said, the Colorado initiative makes it an affirmative
defense against a marijuana charge if the patient in possession has a
doctor's recommendation and gets onto a to-be-established state registry of
patients.

Pesulima said finding a way to legally distribute marijuana to patients
will come later.