NO ONE CERTIFIED YET TO RECEIVE MEDICAL MARIJUANA

HONOLULU - Nearly two months have passed since
Gov. Ben Cayetano signed a bill making Hawaii the eighth state to
legalize possession of marijuana for medical treatment.

But no one has been certified to get it because state narcotics
enforcement officials are still writing procedures to allow doctors to
register patients.

The proposal will go to the attorney general's office, public
hearings, and the governor before they are adopted, perhaps by the end
of this year.

But the new law doesn't say how or where patients can obtain
marijuana, said Keith Kamita, chief of the state's narcotics
enforcement division.

``That's one of the flaws in the law,'' he said.

Besides making no provisions for distribution or sale of marijuana for
medical purposes, or law doesn't even allow a patient to obtain seeds
or plants to grow their own.

In the meantime, a growing network of underground growers is said to
be filling a demand for medical marijuana. They often give the
marijuana to friends for medicinal use or sell it far below the market
prices.

The growers are well aware that federal law prohibits marijuana, even
for medical purposes.

Hawaii probably will have to follow the same pattern as other states
in which somebody who forms a growers' club or buyers' club gets
arrested, and the issues are aired in court, said Allen St. Pierre,
executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws.