MAINE PANEL TO SORT OUT MEDICAL-MARIJUANA LAW

The Will Of The People Is At Odds With Federal Drug Rules.

PORTLAND, Maine - Bryan Clark grows his medicine in his bedroom.

In a makeshift cardboard structure under harsh white lights are four
marijuana plants. Clark, an AIDS patient whose weight had fallen from 250
pounds to 118, smokes pot to relieve pain, quell nausea, and spur his
appetite.

He picked up a plant and plumped the soil. The leaves were pale green and
delicate - an unlikely source for the furor that has enveloped Maine.

Patients such as Clark, 26, a hemophiliac who contracted AIDS after being
injected with HIV-infected blood-clotting agent, are the focus of a
citizens' initiative legalizing the use of medical marijuana that passed in
November. Maine is the first Eastern state to pass such a measure. It is in
direct conflict with federal law.

Starting today, a panel appointed by the state attorney general will
determine a way to implement the new law. Through the initiative and a
series of actions that followed, Maine residents have redefined the meaning
of medicine and challenged the script of the national war on drugs.

Alaska, Washington state, Oregon and California have passed similar ballot
initiatives. Nevada and Colorado may soon follow. In April, Hawaii's
legislature enacted a medical-marijuana law. (Neither New Jersey nor
Pennsylvania is considering one.)

What complicates the issue in Maine is that after the ballot initiative
passed, legislators proposed that the state itself distribute marijuana to
those too ill to grow their own.

That pleased activists, who believed the initiative - which allows patients
with such diseases as AIDS, cancer, glaucoma and epilepsy to grow as many as
six plants for personal use - did not sufficiently address the question of
access.

The law-enforcement establishment, however, was aghast.

"What they are doing adds insult to injury," said Michael Chitwood, chief of
police in Portland, and a former Philadelphia officer.

"The Maine drug-enforcement agencies would be responsible for distributing
the marijuana for medical use, which to me is nuts," Chitwood said. "They
are out there fighting the war on drugs and making arrests and confiscating
drugs, and now they are expected to give it out?"

Attorney General Andrew Ketterer was told to find a way to obey the will of
the people, devise a distribution system - and not break federal law.

It was like being told to clap without using hands.

Ketterer sympathizes with patients such as Clark and wants them to get the
medicine they need. But from his Augusta office overlooking the Kennebec
River, he must speak as the state's top law officer: "From the point of view
of the lawyer and the state, I don't want to get into armed conflict with
the federal government."

The U.S. Attorney's Office will be sending a representative to today's
meeting. Ketterer's task force is to try to reach consensus by this fall.

That will be difficult. Legislators want to implement a popular mandate
without risking a cutoff in federal funds. Law-enforcement officials do not
want to be seen distributing marijuana. Libertarians see a states'-rights
issue and want to push the law to thumb their noses at the federal
government.

"If you are an ill patient, it is nothing other than a medical issue," said
Elizabeth Beane, who heads Mainers for Medical Rights, which spearheaded the
citizens' initiative. "People should have access to medication that works.
It's an individual-rights issue."

Not so fast, say doctors, who do not want to be caught in the crossfire of
the state, the feds, patients and police.

"It puts us in a very awkward position," said Owen Pickus, a Portland
oncologist and one of many doctors who believe marijuana is medically
useful. "I don't want to be in the courtroom debating whether this patient
vomited enough to get the drug, and whether they tried everything else
first."

One option the task force will consider is for the state to launch a
research program and ask the federal government to allow patients to get
marijuana in the interest of science, said Deputy Attorney General James
Cameron, the state's drug-prosecution coordinator.

"Everyone knows it's not going to be research," scoffed Pickus "Everyone is
going to be winking and looking the other way and saying, 'Yeah, we're doing
research.' "

On its face, the issue affects few people. Maine may have fewer than 250
patients who could use marijuana to alleviate the nausea, weight loss and
other symptoms associated with cancer, AIDS and glaucoma.

Critics fear that for each real patient, many others will abuse the law and
smoke marijuana recreationally. Bob Weiner, a spokesman for Gen. Barry
McCaffrey, President Clinton's drug czar, said the federal government would
be inflexible in dealing with the Maine initiative. Medical marijuana, he
said, is "a backdoor wedge for legalizers to get their way on [recreational]
marijuana."

Already, shops in Portland are selling buttons that say, "I swear officer,
it's for my glaucoma."

But if medical marijuana is a tactic for "legalizers," it is undeniably also
a cry for help from patients.

Voters are clearly sympathetic, and the federal government has been forced
to look the other way. No funds have been withdrawn, and, as Robert Kampia
of the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project said of California:
"The federal government does not have the resources to send Drug Enforcement
Administration officials sweeping up and down the West Coast arresting
cancer patients."

But marijuana remains a major target in the war on drugs.

Justice Department spokeswoman Gretchen Michael said that of 47,277 federal
criminal cases filed in 1998, drugs accounted for 15,046, or almost a third.
About 10 percent of all cases filed by U.S. attorneys - and a third of all
drug cases - involve marijuana.

The intensity of the war on drugs is an issue that unites many Maine groups,
who feel it unfairly targets minorities and the poor.

"Kids from an urban setting [caught] with dope go to jail; kids from wealthy
families go to therapy," said Mark Dion, sheriff of Maine's biggest county,
Cumberland, which includes Portland. "The drug war is code for class war."

Dion, who broke with his police peers in supporting the citizen's initiative
last year, said he made the decision after consulting with his priest and
his conscience.

He agreed that "there will be people abusing marijuana" as a result of the
new law. In one of many references to Thomas Jefferson, the sheriff said:
"We should not hinder the opportunity to do right for fear that wrong may
come from it."

In his Portland apartment, Bryan Clark folded his arms. He knows all the
arguments.

Around him hung the sharp, sweet smell of marijuana. All of Clark's current
supply comes from the street; as his bedroom plants mature, he thinks they
will supply about a third of his needs.

Clark, who bitterly blames the government for lapses in oversight that led
to his infection, said, "This is the same government that tells me marijuana
is a bad, addictive drug."

He was diagnosed at age 14 with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. He lost his
appetite, and his weight plummeted. He tried the prescription medicine
Marinol, which contains the active ingredient in marijuana, but it did not
help. He turned to smoking joints.

"I tried it first when I was 17," Clark said. "I didn't adopt it as a daily
routine until I realized that after I smoked, I would go and eat."

On most days, Clark is a fervent advocate for medical marijuana and changing
the law. During an interview on Saturday, however, his joints were racked by
pain from arthritis that is related to his hemophilia - and he wondered
aloud if he could simply make a private deal with the government: "You gave
me AIDS; let me smoke pot."