POT ADVOCATES PUSH LEGALIZATION

Ads Urge Ending Penalties For Recreational Marijuana Use, As Medicinal Use
Gains Ground.

In a year when Woodstock makes headlines and Austin Powers does well at the
box office, another 1960s phenomenon is attempting its own comeback:
legalization of marijuana.

Even as the courts, law enforcement, and the federal government continue to
wrestle with growing acceptance of marijuana for medicinal purposes,
advocates have begun the first serious campaign in decades to erase
penalties for its recreational use.

Billboards are sprouting up across San Francisco this week, laced with some
humor, but carrying the tagline: "Stop arresting responsible pot smokers."

"We decided it was time to try and move the marijuana debate beyond the
medicinal issue," says Keith Stroup, founder of the Washington-based
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which is behind the
new campaign.

While San Francisco, with its liberal reputation, was chosen as the launch
site for the campaign, it is likely to spread to Los Angeles and other
major cities in the coming months, Mr. Stroup says. The goal, he says, is
to "introduce the concept of responsible marijuana use" by adults.

Wrong Message?

Opponents worry about a nascent softening of marijuana laws in general, and
object in particular to the ripple effect of this newest campaign.

"This message is dangerous because it tells teens that marijuana is a
benign drug," says Joseph Califano, president of the National Center on
Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in New York. In
reality, marijuana is a gateway drug that can lead to use of cocaine and
other harder drugs, according to the center.

While backers of the new campaign favor legalization, they're attempting as
a first step revival of the decriminalization trend that took hold from the
late 1960s through 1978.

During that decade, 11 states passed laws reducing penalties, generally to
a fine, for the private use of small amounts of marijuana. The movement was
broad and embraced states as dissimilar as Nebraska, North Carolina, New
York, Mississippi, Oregon, and California.

Then in the 1980s, the nation's political environment changed dramatically,
with soaring public angst over crime and the general direction of the
nation's youth. By the 1990s, the war on drugs was under way and marijuana
advocates had shifted their strategy to focus more narrowly on legalizing
the drug for medicinal purposes.

Now marijuana proponents think the nation's mood is shifting once again and
that, for a variety of reasons, sentiment favoring liberalization is
building anew. The Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington group involved in
the effort to permit medical marijuana, predicts that the number of states
allowing such use will double from four currently to eight or so over the
next 18 months. Maine will vote in November on a medical marijuana
initiative, with other states to follow next year with ballot initiatives
or legislation.

Shift In Federal Research

While the Clinton administration has been a staunch opponent of loosening
marijuana laws, that line of opposition was breached slightly earlier this
year when the Institute of Medicine ruled, after assessing a wide range of
scientific studies, that marijuana can be effective as medicine.

The study, requested by the White House, ran counter to the
administration's previous insistence that there was no evidence marijuana
had any beneficial role in treating the ill.

The Institute of Medicine finding has prompted new guidelines for
scientific research on a number of remaining issues related to medical
marijuana. Proponents consider the move a major step forward after years
when the government basically blocked additional inquiry.

Still, the federal government has not softened its position that federal
law prohibiting marijuana trumps state laws allowing medicinal use.

Earlier this month, federal prosecutors won their first case against
someone growing marijuana since California passed its medicinal marijuana
initiative in 1996. A federal judge in Sacramento, disallowing any
consideration of the state's voter-approved law, sentenced B.E. Smith to 27
months in prison for growing 87 pot plants.

Stroup says people are "fed up with the notion that we need to send
everyone to prison for minor drug offenses," particularly for activities
sanctioned by states. In fact, legislation in Congress would allow states
to set medicinal-use policies without federal interference.

Most polls show strong public support of medical marijuana use, but most
people do not favor legalization. Positions on decriminalization, where
recreational use is punished with fines rather than jail, are less clear
and depend on how the questions are phrased.

Decriminalization advocates say "prohibition" is a policy failure. The
costs of funneling small-time marijuana users through the criminal courts
far outweigh any discernible gains, they argue, particularly when penalties
have not deterred the flood of marijuana on the streets. About 695,000
Americans were arrested in 1997 on marijuana charges, 83 percent for simple
possession.

Still groups such as the Family Research Council say any easing of drug
laws would send a dangerous signal, particularly to teens, that will only
make a bad problem worse.