Excerpted from: CAMPAIGN NOTEBOOK

Whatever else the two candidates for district attorney may say during this
mud-slung election, they cannot claim that they didn't inhale.

In an only-in-San-Francisco encounter, District Attorney Terence Hallinan
and challenger Bill Fazio vied for the honor of who was the bigger champion
of dope during a debate Tuesday night at the San Francisco Patients
Resource Center on Divisadero, a medical pot club.

``I've always felt that treating marijuana as a serious drug was improper,
wrong and cruel,'' said Hallinan, who noted that he was the only district
attorney to support Proposition 215, the 1996 medical marijuana initiative.

For his part, despite having once prosecuted Dennis Peron, a co-author of
Proposition 215 and founder of the 9,000-member Cannabis Cultivators Club,
Fazio said: ``It isn't a matter of whether you have a right to medical
marijuana. You have a right to medication no matter what that medication
might be, be it Tylenol or be it marijuana.''

Both candidates for the job of top prosecutor accused each other of putting
marijuana dealers in jail. They reiterated their support for the
proposition as well as for finding ways that the plant can be legally grown
for medicinal purposes.

The debate developed a sharp tone at times as Hallinan and Fazio engaged in
personal attacks. But the mood mellowed afterward as the lobby filled with
the sweet smell of pot and the candidates lingered there, chatting amicably
with their supporters.