BERKELEY MAY RELAX DRUG LAW

BERKELEY -- It could become a whole lot easier to get away with smoking
marijuana in Berkeley. The city is weighing an ordinance that would all but
legalize marijuana by telling the police to ignore most laws against it. If
adopted, the law would allow medicinal users to have more than one pound of
the stuff on hand, and smoking it in public wouldn't land users in jail.

The proposal, dubbed "The Kinder and Safer Streets Act of 1999," is still a
long way from becoming law, and it remains unclear how much Berkeley would
relax its marijuana law enforcement. The City Council, noting a big jump in
marijuana arrests last year, recently told the city manager and police
chief to weigh in on the issue, but it will probably be several months
before it comes to a vote.

"The goal is to stop subjecting people to the pain of being criminalized
and make sure Berkeley honors the spirit and the letter of Prop. 215," said
Councilman Kriss Worthington, who sponsored the ordinance with Councilwoman
Linda Maio.

Police question the need for the law because arresting people for smoking
marijuana has never been a high priority.

"In terms of the great scheme of things and all the things we have to do as
police officers, it's not high on the list to go out and enforce marijuana
laws," said police Capt. Bobby Miller.

Most Berkeley residents support the medicinal use of marijuana -- 81
percent approved Prop. 215 -- and the council is widely expected to do
something to make it easier for the sick to obtain the drug. Less clear is
whether the council is willing to allow the same latitude for those who get
high just for fun.

"People who benefit from it should be allowed to use it," said Councilwoman
Betty Olds. "But it should be restricted. My concern is that it will open
the floodgates."

Passed Prop. 215 derails California voters approved Prop. 215 in 1996,
allowing the seriously ill to use marijuana with a doctor's prescription.
The initiative has largely failed because of the federal government, which
has shut down marijuana "clubs" in San Francisco and other cities.

Although many Bay Area cities, including Oakland and San Jose, allow the
operation of such clubs, Berkeley is believed to be the first to consider
easing restrictions on recreational marijuana use as well.

"There's no other city that's taken as bold a stand," said Don Duncan of
Berkeley's Cannabis Action Network, which helped write the proposed
ordinance. "Berkeley is leading the charge on this issue."

The new law would update a 20-year-old ordinance that made enforcement of
marijuana laws a low priority by discouraging police from arresting people
for possessing or using the drug.

The updated law allows the greatest leeway to medicinal marijuana users by
prohibiting police from arresting or citing patients, their caretakers or
medical marijuana clubs. Patients would be allowed to possess as much as
1.5 pounds of marijuana or cultivate as many as 30 plants.

The law also calls for protecting recreational users by creating three
enforcement "priority levels" reflecting the severity of the offense. For
example, selling marijuana to a child or driving while stoned would be a
"high-priority" crime that would land the offender in jail.

Arresting people for smoking marijuana outside a cafe would be a moderate
priority, in which police might ask the people to abstain and, if they
refuse, cite them for disorderly conduct. The idea is to minimize the
number of felonious marijuana arrests, which carry stiffer penalties,
including the loss of a driver's license, student financial aid and
government assistance benefits.

"It's inequitable and excessive punishment," said Dale Gieringer,
coordinator of the state chapter of the National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws. "This will get the police to focus on more
serious crimes and not waste such resources on what is a petty offense."

The lowest priority -- meaning police should ignore the offense -- would be
arresting someone for using or possessing marijuana at home.

"We've tried to take the middle ground and set some guidelines that spell
out when it is appropriate to enforce marijuana laws and when it's not
appropriate," Duncan said.

Miller argues that the police have always followed such guidelines.

"This ordinance apparently talks about assuring that marijuana enforcement
be one of the lowest priorities," he said. "But that's no change from what
has always been done."

Arrests nearly triple The drive to reform the city's drug enforcement
policy is fueled by alarm over an almost threefold increase in marijuana
arrests by Berkeley police last year. Police attribute the jump to a
crackdown on drug dealing around Telegraph Avenue, but critics worry that
medicinal marijuana users are being unjustly punished.

One case Worthington and others found particularly troubling was October's
arrest of Buzz Linhart, who uses marijuana to relieve glaucoma and other
ailments. He has a doctor's prescription for marijuana and grew the
substance in the back yard of his south Berkeley home.

"It was what we considered to be a legal medicinal garden," Linhart said.

Linhart declined to discuss specifics of the case because of possible
litigation, but according to news reports, police seized 13 marijuana
plants even after Linhart showed them a prescription. The plants were
confiscated and held for seven months until a judge tossed out the arrest
and ordered police to return the plants.

Linhart was one of 109 people arrested on felonious marijuana charges
between July and December 1998 -- up from just 38 during the same period in
1997, police records show.

"What we're seeing in Berkeley, even in the aftermath of Prop. 215, is
arrests for medical and nonmedical use of marijuana are increasing
dramatically," Duncan said.

There were 305 felony and misdemeanor marijuana offenses in Berkeley last
year, police reported. That represents less than one-half of 1 percent of
the 68,164 cases the department investigated, police said.

As of Wednesday, there had been 139 marijuana arrests this year, police said.

Miller said that many of last year's arrests came during two drug
crackdowns in the Telegraph area. Both followed complaints from the City
Council, merchants and residents about loitering and drug dealing, he said.

"People were peddling all kinds of drugs, but there was more marijuana
being sold and passed than even we realized at the time," he said.