OREGON MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAW WINNING OVER PATIENTS, DOCTORS

SALEM, Ore. - Nearly 200 permits have been issued under Oregon's new
medical marijuana law, and hundreds of other patients have inquired
about getting the state's blessing to smoke pot, officials said Tuesday.

Since the first permit was issued in May, there have been few hitches
under the voter-passed law that allows patients to cultivate and smoke
marijuana for medical reasons if they get a doctors note.

Backers of medicinal marijuana say it can ease some of the symptoms of
cancer, glaucoma, AIDS, multiple sclerosis and other serious illnesses.

Some doctors are still reluctant to participate, but for patients like
Stormy Ray, an Ontario woman who suffers from multiple sclerosis, the
new law has been a life changer.

'It's a blessing," she said Tuesday. "Now I won't be ostracized and
my family won't be destroyed because I use a medication that works for
me."

Kelly Paige, manager of Oregon's medical marijuana program, said that
so far 190 patients have paid the $150 fee for a permit and that her
office has gotten requests for information from another 1,500 people.

Paige said she's heard of no problems with the law, and that patients
have begun to work their way around a Catch-22 in the law that says
it's legal to grow and possess marijuana but not to buy the starting
seeds.

There's nothing in the law that forbids medical marijuana patients
from giving each other seeds, and many of those people have begun
"networking" over the Internet and by other means for that purpose,
she said.

"It would be a lot easier to go down to the comer pharmacy and buy
marijuana cigarettes in a little orange bottle," Paige said. "But
this is where we are at now with our law."

Dr. Rick Bayer, chief sponsor of the law, said doctors initially were
reluctant to take 'part for fear of running afoul of the federal
government, since any use of marijuana still is illegal under federal
drug laws.

Still, Bayer said he believes doctors are becoming increasingly more
willing to help patients who have a legitimate need for medicinal marijuana.

Bayer noted that the state's largest organization of physicians, the
Oregon Medical Association, had advised its members not to participate
after the law first surfaced last fall.

The OMA dropped that stance in April and instead issued a set of
guidelines telling physicians how to help their patients obtain
marijuana for medicinal purposes.

'I think there were physicians holding back because they didn't know
about that," Bayer said of the OMA’s new guidelines. "So I think it's
going to take time" to get more physicians participating.

During last year's campaign on the issue, some law enforcement
officials said they were worried that large scale marijuana growers or
dealers might try to hide behind the medical pot law.

But Marion County District Attorney Dale Penn, who worked with the
1999 Oregon Legislature to clarify the language of the law, said those
fears so far have proved to be unfounded.

"There have been a few individual cases here and there where an
individual has attempted to use the marijuana law as an after-the-fact
excuse" after being arrested for illegally possessing marijuana, he
said.

"But so far, we haven't seen any major abuses," the district attorney
said.

Ray, the multiple sclerosis sufferer, said she relishes being able to
take a few legal puffs of marijuana every few hours to alleviate the
muscle spasms and upset stomach caused by her disease.