WASHINGTON -- More than 10 months after they cast ballots, residents of the
District of Columbia were told Monday that they had overwhelmingly voted in
favor of a measure that would allow marijuana to be used for medical
purposes. Congressional opponents of the measure had blocked a count of the
initiative, but Judge Richard W. Roberts of Federal District Court here
ruled on Friday that the restriction was illegal.

The count that was released on Monday found that 68.6 percent of the voters
approved the medical use of marijuana, with 75,536 in favor and 34,621
opposed. Advocates of the measure maintain that marijuana is valuable in
relieving the pain of glaucoma and the nausea associated with AIDS and other
diseases. Despite the vote, it is not certain that the measure will become
law because, under the authority that Congress maintains over the District
of Columbia, lawmakers have 30 days in which to block the measure. "We have
to gear up to do a lobbying campaign," said Wayne Turner, the sponsor of the
initiative and leader of the anti-AIDS group Act Up. Both the House of
Representatives and the Senate would have to vote against the law to block
it, and a spokesman for Representative Bob Barr, a conservative Republican
from Georgia who sponsored the measure that prevented the vote count, said
Mr. Barr's office was studying what steps would be taken.

Mr. Turner said he drew hope from the fact that one-third of the members of
Congress were from states that have voted to legalize the medical use of
marijuana. Such laws were approved in referendums in Alaska, Arizona,
California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

Representative Barr said today: "The results of this initiative do not
change my determination to insure our nation's capital does not legalize any
mind-altering drugs, including marijuana.

"Marijuana remains illegal under Federal law, and it would send a terrible
message to America's young people to allow those laws to be openly flouted
in the same city where they were passed."

Mr. Turner said: "Bob Barr has called it a hidden agenda and says that we
want to legalize heroin and crack, but that's not so. The original sponsor
was my partner, Steve Michael, who died of AIDS in 1998. We started this
project for patient access.

"I am not a pot smoker and neither was he until a doctor told him to try
marijuana to try to stimulate his appetite. He tried it and it worked. He
stopped losing weight."

The Washington chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which pressed
Mr. Turner's case in court, pointed to the vote as a ratification of
home-rule rights for residents of the District of Columbia. "In this
instance," said Mary Jane DeFrank, executive director of the A.C.L.U.
chapter, "when you have people very, very ill, it is really the humane thing
to allow them to use marijuana so they can keep their food down and keep
their pills down."

Chuck Thomas, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, a group based in
Washington that campaigned for the measure, said the vote in Washington was
in line with that in referendums elsewhere.

"To date, these initiatives have passed in every state in which they have
appeared on the ballot," Mr. Thomas said. "This confirms what every
scientific public opinion poll has found since 1995: 60 to 80 percent of the
American people support legal access to medicinal marijuana."