REGISTRY PROPOSED TO TRACK MEDICAL MARIJUANA USERS

SAN FRANCISCO -- A committee of police, medical marijuana advocates and
doctors has recommended that California establish a voluntary registry of
medical marijuana patients to protect users from arrest.

The Medical Marijuana Task Force, appointed in March by state Attorney
General Bill Lockyer, also has recommended that the state develop
regulations to allow groups of patients and caregivers to grow marijuana.

The proposals, if made law, would represent an about-face from the policies
of former Gov. Pete Wilson. His attorney general, Dan Lungren, maintained
that Proposition 215, passed by voters in November 1996, allows only
individual patients to grow marijuana and to use the medical marijuana law
as a defense if prosecuted.

State regulation of marijuana cooperatives would allow clubs now operating
underground in Humboldt, Mendocino, Marin, San Francisco, Alameda, San Diego
and Santa Cruz counties to function openly, said task force members and
other medical marijuana advocates.

"Some clubs, at least, will apply under these guidelines," said Dale
Gieringer, an author of Prop. 215 and a spokesman for the California chapter
of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which lobbies
for the legalization of marijuana.

The statewide registry would make enforcement uniform, with patients issued
photo identification cards that all the state's law enforcement agencies
would honor.

Prop. 215 was supposed to end the prosecution of patients who could produce
a doctor's recommendation that they use marijuana to treat a variety of
serious illnesses, including AIDS and cancer. Instead, patients' chances of
being arrested and prosecuted for using marijuana depend largely on where
they happen to live or travel.

In Northern California's Mendocino County, a user can apply to the county
health department for an identity card and expect not to be molested by
local deputies if in possession of no more than six marijuana plants and 2
pounds of marijuana. But even patients carrying a Mendocino identity card
have no guarantee against arrest in many other counties that interpret the
law as merely a defense a patient may use after being arrested and brought
to court on charges of growing, buying or possessing marijuana.

The task force's recommendations have not yet been released, and some of the
wording is still being reviewed by organizations represented on the
committee.

But state Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-San Jose, hopes to introduce a bill this
month to establish the statewide registry.

Some medical marijuana supporters and AIDS activists have already raised
concerns.

"This is unprecedented," said Dennis Peron, chief author of Prop. 215, whose
San Francisco medical marijuana club was closed by a federal court in 1998.
"Registering cancer patients? For what? This is treating marijuana as though
it were heroin." The law, Peron insisted, "is working. They are just doing
this to appease the cops."

The task force's 16-page document, drafted as an Assembly bill, would have
patients submit their doctor's recommendations and an application to their
county health departments, along with a fee.

In return, patients would receive an identity card, which would include a
24-hour 800 telephone number that officers could call to verify the card's
validity. People identified as primary caregivers to medical users of
marijuana would also have the right to carry the identity card. The card
would be renewed annually.

A similar system exists in Oregon, where patients must pay $150 to register
with the state.