MEDICAL POT DISPENSARIES PROMOTED

Some of California's leading medical marijuana activists released a
new report yesterday touting dispensaries as a benefit to both
patients and the communities in which they operate.

Americans for Safe Access, an Oakland-based advocacy group for
medical marijuana patients, said in its analysis that storefront
dispensaries are the most effective way for chronically ill people to
obtain their medicine and for city and police officials to make sure
the drugs are not abused.

The 23-page report was released outside the San Diego Convention
Center, where the League of California Cities is holding its 108th
annual conference. The issue of medical marijuana is not on the
agenda for the four-day meeting, which concludes tomorrow. Elected
officials from three California cities joined Americans for Safe
Access and a University of California researcher in presenting the
report, which details medical marijuana policies and promotes
specific rules to grant patients safe and routine access to marijuana.

Some two dozen cities across the state have passed ordinances
regulating dispensaries - something elected officials in San Diego
County have refused to do. The politicians who spoke yesterday said
the laws helped set ground rules for everyone concerned.

"We have not experienced any complaints," said Lee Pierce, a Santa
Rosa councilman.

Mike Rotkin, a Santa Cruz city councilman, told reporters that the
ordinance his community adopted has helped patients, police and residents.

"All these people have realized that if it's regulated properly, it
doesn't end up in street-dealing or kids lighting up in class,"
Rotkin said. "This is about medicine."

University of California professor Amanda Reiman conducted more than
130 patient surveys over six months before concluding that
dispensaries are the best way to provide reliable access to medical
marijuana. She said politics too often influence government policies.

"It's really hard to argue science against ideology," she said.
"That's been a big issue in drug policy."

But Damon Mosler, who oversees the narcotics unit for San Diego
County district attorney Bonnie Dumanis, said there is nothing in the
state medical marijuana law that permits selling the drug from a storefront.

"The dispensary mechanism is illegal," he said. "There probably are
solutions, but they have to come about through legislative changes.
Then, of course, we would accept something like that."

The activist group chose San Diego as the place to release its
findings not just because hundreds of elected officials are attending
the League conference but because San Diego has become the epicenter
of the fight over medical marijuana.

Federal law does not permit the use, cultivation or possession of
marijuana and does not recognize any medical benefit the drug may
have for AIDS, cancer and other patients. Even so, California and 10
other states have passed laws that permit sick and dying people to
use the drug to ease symptoms.

The San Diego City Council adopted guidelines for complying with
state medical marijuana laws in 2003, becoming the biggest city in
the nation to set rules on how patients could use or grow the drug.
But the San Diego ordinance did not address the issue of
dispensaries, which began popping up all over the city.

Late last year, local law enforcement officials joined federal drug
agents in raiding more than a dozen of the storefronts, seizing pot,
equipment and patient records. They followed that action with a July
sweep that netted 15 arrests and effectively closed every dispensary
in San Diego County.

Early this year, the county Board of Supervisors sued the state of
California in an attempt to overturn the Compassionate Use Act, which
was approved by 56 percent of voters in 1996, including a majority in
San Diego County.

A trial in that case is scheduled for November. It will be defended
by the state Attorney General's Office, the American Civil Liberties
Union, Americans for Safe Access and the Drug Policy Alliance.

Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access, is
confident the county will lose in court. If and when it does, she
said her group will help San Diego officials develop guidelines to
regulate the safe dispensing of medical marijuana.

"We're reaching out to the city," she said. "They don't have to
reinvent the wheel. Other cities have done it and done it
successfully. We want to create policies that will work for everyone."