POT REFORM STALLS IN SACRAMENTO

Govenor Davis Plays It Straight

"I have no idea what's going on," says a frustrated state Senator John
Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), summing up the purgatory in which
California's medical-marijuana policy is mired.

Like characters in a Samuel Beckett play, patients and advocates anxiously
await the arrival of a humane resolution, only to learn that the elusive
Godot may yet again be waylaid by reefer madness, this time in the form of
Governor Gray Davis. The continuing legal limbo was announced almost as an
aside in the July 14 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, when Davis'
press secretary, Michael Bustamante, was queried about Senate Bill 848,
which would codify regulations to legally protect the sick and dying who
use cannabis. Bustamante responded that "given the governor's long-standing
position, I would be hard-pressed to see him sign it." Bustamante cited
federal law, which schedules pot as a dangerous and medically useless drug.

Vasconcellos, who authored 848, was irate. Not only had he learned of the
governor's position by reading it in a newspaper, but he says that Mike
Gotch, Davis' legislative secretary, went behind his back to Assemblyman
Martin Gallegos (D-Baldwin Park), chairman of the Assembly Health
Committee, and tried, to no avail, to persuade Gallegos to postpone a vote
on the bill (calls to Gotch and Gallegos were not returned). "If I'm going
to tamper with your stuff, I'll always tell you first," said Vasconcellos
in a phone interview. What about the feds? "I have some word of what
[Clinton drug czar Barry] McCaffrey's position is. The czar," Vasconcellos
muttered, then added, "This is not Russia. Press secretaries and czars have
no place in my world."

Vasconcellos' anger is rooted in the tortuous history of the state's
med-mar policy. After Proposition 215 passed in 1996, former Governor Pete
Wilson vetoed corollary legislation, and then-Attorney General Dan Lungren
refused to enforce the new law, leaving the choice of whether to recognize
it to local cops and district attorneys. While federal agencies moved to
close several cannabis clubs serving medical users, local authorities
tended to honor the new state law, though many patients, particularly in
rural counties, continued to be busted and/or had their medicine confiscated.

When Davis and Bill Lockyer replaced Wilson and Lungren this year,
medical-marijuana users were hopeful that the state would finally challenge
the federal authorities and honor Prop. 215's mandate to "implement a plan
to provide for the safe and affordable distribution to all those in need of
medical marijuana." Lockyer had supported 215 (citing the cancer deaths of
his mother and sister as the primary motivation for his compassion) and got
labeled soft-on-dope for it during last fall's campaign. Davis, who as
lieutenant governor had opposed 215 and who had participated in an anti-215
press conference with drug czar McCaffrey, was more of a question mark.
Vasconcellos moved to test the new political waters with Senate Bill 848,
which puts forth regulations to legally protect the sick and dying who use
cannabis. "All we knew was, we did not have to deal with Pete Wilson,"
recalls Rand Martin, Vasconcellos' chief of staff.

Almost immediately after his inauguration, Lockyer -- with Vasconcellos --
convened the Medical Marijuana Task Force, a pluralistic committee of three
dozen, representing historically unbridgeable biases (patients, cops,
D.A.s, doctors, lawyers) with the goal of protecting sick people from
erratic and ambiguous enforcement of 215. The task force released a set of
recommendations on July 12, the heart of which is a patient-registration
card. The recommendations were promptly slotted into SB 848, which had
already passed the Democratic state Senate (along with its companion, 847,
which calls for up to $3 million for med-mar research in the UC system).
But Bustamante's declaration threw into doubt hopes for a cogent new state
approach.

In an interview with the Weekly, Bustamante stood by his statement to the
Chronicle: "The federal laws still make the possession and use of marijuana
illegal, and the state shouldn't be in the business of sanctioning it."
Bustamante said that Davis opposed 215 in part because "at the time, which
was two and a half years ago now, there really wasn't any scientific
evidence that would demonstrate the medical use of marijuana." But Scott
Imler of the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center isn't buying this. "Just
because Davis still thinks the world is flat doesn't mean there isn't
scientific evidence to the contrary."

Imler, a co-author of 215 and one of two patients on the task force,
maintains that the federal-vs.-state argument is another nonissue: "It's
not the state's job to enforce federal law. California's always in court
with the feds over something. So why is this any different? Because it's
marijuana. The governor is playing games with people's lives."

Under SB 848, county health departments would process applications for
patients and their caregivers and require written documentation by
physicians of the condition. Patients and caregivers who qualify would
receive a photo identification card. Qualified patients/caregivers can
collectively cultivate, allowing for tightly restricted versions of
cannabis cooperatives. The state Department of Health Services (DHS) would
issue regulations to ensure quality, noncontamination and nondiversion of
medicine, and county health departments would have the right to inspect
cooperatives in order to ensure compliance.

It was a solution designed to cover all bases. "In most situations,
patients want the registry because they want to avoid arrest," says Bill
Zimmerman, a task force member and executive director of Americans for
Medical Rights, the advocacy group that coordinated the 215 campaign and
five other state med-mar initiatives (Alaska and Oregon currently have
statewide registries, and one is under consideration in Washington state).
"As it happens, the cops also want the registry because they want to be
able to tell in the field who's a legitimate patient."

But already, the coalition backing 848 is beginning to splinter. Some
law-enforcement authorities have serious problems with the registration
system, which is voluntary and allows smoking anywhere cigarettes are
permitted (except within 1,000 feet of a school or while driving a car).
"Unless it becomes some kind of compulsory reporting by doctors so that we
know who is entitled to medicinal marijuana and that it be [smoked]
discreetly -- not in open places -- it's not gonna have the governor's
endorsement," says a highly placed source in Sacramento who spoke on the
condition of anonymity.

To assuage law enforcement and the governor, five amendments have been
drafted, including a ban on smoking in public and a mandatory requirement
that doctors notify the health department "that a qualified patient has a
serious medical condition for which the use of medical marijuana is
appropriate."

That mandatory provision is now drawing fire from med-mar advocates. "I
think that amendment is a misuse of the health department, because there's
no public-health purpose to that reporting -- it's for legal purposes so
that police can trace patients to see if they are bona fide users," says
Dr. Jane Marmor, the California Medical Association's med-mar point person
and a member of Lockyer's committee. "I suspect that health officers and
the CMA will not support this bill with that in it."

Nor is there any guarantee that Davis would respond favorably. "Let's see
what the amendments look like, but the governor is not inclined to support
something like this," says Bustamante. Adds Hilary McLean, Davis' deputy
press secretary, "Until it's in front of him we can never say it's final,
but I think it's unlikely that he would sign it."

Lost in the political wrangling and ideological perspectives is the
desperate medical raison d'etre that informs this issue. Tim Weltz is a
38-year-old terminal-lymphoma patient with a legitimate doctor's
recommendation who's been raided and had his medicine confiscated twice in
one year. The last visit by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department
was on June 2. Detective Michael Wirz explained that his officers can't
determine whether a patient is legitimate or not, nor can they "allow
release of a person that violates a law based on him giving us a note
saying it's okay." Wirz admitted that when his deputies entered Weltz's
residence, the dying man was hooked up to an intravenous morphine drip,
that a home health-care worker was present and that Weltz presented his
doctor's letter as prescribed under 215.

Weltz is currently bedridden and "has very few days left," according to his
wife, Brenda. "The patients are not the ones who get thought of," she says.
"There's nothing more traumatic than watching somebody die and knowing
there's things out there which can help them eat and feel a little better.
Unfortunately the people in politics don't seem to be human." Her husband
had a question for the governor: "I'd like to look Governor Davis right in
the eye and ask him, `If it was your family member or you, would you still
hold the same position?'"