SAN FRANCISCO ISSUES ID CARDS FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA USERS

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- With $25 and a doctor's note, sick people can get an
official city ID card entitling them to use medicinal marijuana, San
Francisco's district attorney proudly announced Friday.

"This represents another stone in the foundation we're building to make
people recognize that cannabis is a legitimate medicinal agent," Terence
Hallinan said. "I'm not really worried we won't be able to work things out
with the federal government."

The program allows patients to avoid local prosecution if caught possessing
the drug. It's modeled on programs in Mendocino County and Arcata, Calif.,
that also pose a direct challenge to federal law.

Californians legalized medical marijuana by approving Proposition 215 in
1996, but the measure has been entangled in legal disputes ever since.
Health department officials said their ID card program would not have been
possible without the influence of Hallinan, who calls himself "America's
most progressive district attorney."

"When Proposition 215 passed, many prosecutors said they wouldn't enforce
it," department of public health director Dr. Mitch Katz said. "But things
are different in San Francisco."

As a prosecutor, Hallinan has refused to carry out the War on Drugs,
choosing instead to send minor drug offenders to diversion programs.
Hallinan's stance on pot is shared, however, by a growing number of law
enforcement officials elsewhere in Northern California, where attitudes
toward marijuana have a decidedly mellow tone.

The ID program announced Friday doesn't address how those in need will
obtain the drug; it merely shields them from arrest by certifying that
cardholders have a medical reason to use it.

Doctors sign a form agreeing to monitor the patient's medical condition.
The cards are good for up to two years. Teen-agers can get them too, with
approval from their parent or guardian.

"This is a wonderful civics lesson that could only occur in a place like
San Francisco," San Francisco Police Department Assistant Chief Prentice
Sanders said.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy refused to comment on the San
Francisco program, but the agency has opposed medical marijuana
initiatives, considering them to be a backdoor route to legalizing marijuana.

"Ballot initiatives to date generally have not limited use of marijuana to
a small number of terminally ill patients, as most voters envisioned," the
agency's latest annual report reads. "Rather, they commonly allow marijuana
to be obtained without prescription and used indefinitely without
evaluation by a physician."

Also Friday, a federal judge hinted he may be forced to allow an Oakland
club to distribute medicinal marijuana because the U.S. Justice Department
hasn't rebutted evidence that cannabis is the only effective treatment for
a large group of seriously ill people.

U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer of San Francisco said he would rule
Monday in the complex case, which deals with the conflict between
California's medical marijuana initiative and federal drug regulations.

The White House's drug control agency has said that more scientific
evidence is needed. They got some Thursday at the International AIDS
Conference. Researchers from the University of California-San Francisco
found that pot use did not interfere with the action of protease
inhibitors, the anti-viral drugs that keep HIV in check.

City Supervisor Mark Leno said the UCSF study and the ID card program are
especially important, given San Francisco's history with AIDS.

"I think the medical cannabis movement is especially strong in San
Francisco. Clearly there is a significant number of people living with HIV
and AIDS here," he said. "But there are number of other medical conditions,
like cancer, glaucoma and chronic pain that can be treated with cannabis."

Jane Weirick, who uses marijuana to alleviate pain from a back ailment,
said the cards "finally give us legitimacy."

"I was taking prescription opiates and was stuck in bed all the time," she
said. "When I started taking cannabis I was finally able to function. It
was like night and day."

Voters have approved initiatives legalizing medicinal marijuana use in
California, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington
state. The San Francisco pot ID program has been in operation for a week.

Former Attorney General Dan Lungren had opposed any attempt to carry out
Proposition 215, but since taking office last year, Bill Lockyer has
shifted the state's position, even standing behind a bill to create a
statewide pot ID card program.

Lungren also shut down most of the state's informal pot distribution clubs.
San Francisco's largest pot club remains shuttered, just three blocks from
the city building where the ID program was announced Friday.

San Francisco is now one of the largest cities in the country to embrace
such programs, which police departments have described as an efficient way
to distinguish medical users from recreational ones.

"We are certainly moving into the new millenium in our thinking," Sanders
said. "We find that this is an orderly way to carry out the law and the
will of the people."