MEDICINAL MARIJUANA: 'I'M JUST TRYING TO LIVE'

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A bill by Sen. Maurice Johannessen that sought to
inject two-plant limits and other restrictions into the medicinal
marijuana Compassionate Use Act was thrown out in a Senate Health and
Human Services Committee.

Backers of the bill argued Wednesday that Proposition 215, approved by
voters in 1996, is vague because it sets no restrictions on the
numbers of plants a marijuana-using patient can grow or the amount of
processed pot patients can possess.

Johannessen's bill would have required that doctors recommending
marijuana also record dosages, quantities and frequency of marijuana
use in patients' records _ along with information on the illnesses
leading to the recommendation.

It also would have limited the recommendations to a year and the
number of plants grown to two indoor or six outdoor plants. No patient
could possess more than 1.3 pounds of marijuana.

Johannessen, D-Redding, proposed SB 2089 in February at the urging of
Shasta County Sheriff Jim Pope and District Attorney McGregor Scott,
whose arrests and prosecutions of medical marijuana patients have been
controversial and resulted in some acquittals.

Another pending bill introduced last year by Sen. John Vasconcellos,
D-San Jose, has made it through the Senate committees and is awaiting
Assembly consideration; but the bill, SBA 48, calls for growing and
possession guidelines to be established by health departments.

Johannessen told the committee that "if the Vasconcellos bill is
corrected, we might not need mine," but added, "please, we have a bad
situation here."

Vasconcellos' chief of staff, Rand Martin, said the committee agreed
that Proposition 215 has problems but that they wouldn't have been
solved by Johannessen's bill, which was "not developed with all the
stake holders.

Scott, Pope and sheriffs from Butte and Modoc counties were among the
half-dozen bill backers who offered brief testimony at the hearing.
They said they do not want to be the ones to decide how much marijuana
a patient needs.

"I cannot stress enough the emergency situation in the law enforcement
community and the emergency situation in the patient community," Scott
said.

Several medicinal marijuana users also addressed the
committee.

Ryan Landers, a Sacramento man who said he has suffered from AIDS for
five years, said if Johannessen's bill passed, "I'm guaranteed to go
to jail and die."

He said patients' marijuana needs vary.

"Some may need a half-joint a day, others 10," he said. "They (law
enforcement) think we're just trying to pull the wool over their eyes.
I'm trying to live."

Others complained that marijuana is too expensive to buy and they are
forced to grow it, but that crops are fickle and hard to predict.
Landers said his crop has twice been taken at gunpoint, but police
won't investigate the thefts.

Only two of the six senators present voted on Johannessen's SB 2089 _
one for and one against; among those who abstained was Richard
Polanco, D-Los Angeles.

"In California the voters have spoken," Polanco said. "We have a bill,
and once a bill is on the Assembly side, that is ahead of the others.
I'd like to see the parties get together and work on this."