MEDICAL-MARIJUANA MEASURES TUNED TO TAP INTO COMPASSION

Drugs: Proponents hope voters will think of suffering patients, not
law-enforcement concerns.

Juneau,Alaska-When Alaskans voted to end more than a decade of legal
marijuana smoking in 1990,the question was so hotly contested that pot got
more votes than the man elected governor.

Eight years later,Alaskans-along with voters in Nevada,Washington,Oregon
and the District of Columbia-will decide whether to make the drug legal
again,but only for people suffering from one of a short list of specific
ailments.

Similar measures appear on ballots in Arizona and Colorado, but Colorado's
initiative has been declared invalid for lack of approved petition
signatures.

Advocates hope the initiatives' narrow focus on medical applications will
appeal to voter compassion and evoke images of solace, of pain eased, of
appetite restored and body-wracking nausea quieted.

Opponents, however, raise fears that the measures are just a wedge to
loosen the nation's drug laws.

"I think that this is despicable, that they're using the sick and the dying
to get their foot in the door to legalize drugs," said Marie Majewske, who
campaigned to recriminalize marijuana in Alaska after a state Supreme Court
ruling had made it legal for 15 years.

Passage "would be a dangerous step backward in the fight against crime in
our nation's cities," said District of Columbia Police Chief Charles H.
Ramsey. Ramsey is president of the Major City Chiefs Association, and
organization of the chiefs of police in the 52 largest cities in the United
States and Canada. The association voted Monday to oppose the marijuana
initiatives.

Criticism that the laws were too vague or that medical use would open the
to open use of pot, LSD and heroin helped sink or stall earlier
legalization efforts, and advocates this year have taken care to fine-tune
the proposals.

The new proposals spell out specific ailments that warrant use of
marijuana. Three measures - in Alaska, Oregon and Nevada - would establish
state registries of patients entitled to use it. In Alaska and Oregon,
patients could get identification cards to ward off arrest.

The laws would require patients to get a doctor's recommendation that
marijuana will help one or more of a list of illnesses that includes
cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, chronic pain, seizures and muscle spasms.

"I'm not a refugee from the hemp fest," said Dr. Richard Bayer, an
internist who sponsored the Oregon initiative. "This would help patients
and this would help doctors who want to help patients."

California voters approved the cultivation and use of medicinal marijuana
in 1996, but the U.S. Justice Department and state Attorney General Dan
Lungren have successfully limited the law's effects by persuading judges to
close most of the clubs where patients bought their pot.

The latest to be shuttered is a 2,200-member club in Oakland, where the
City Council last week declared a public-health emergency and said it would
find some other way to distribute pot to the ailing.

An Arizona measure to legalize marijuana and 115 other drugs for medical
use passed in 1996 but was thwarted the following year when legislators
barred doctors from prescribing the drugs without federal approval.

A measure on the Nov. 3 ballot backs the Legislature's bill. If it fails,
the initiative Arizonans passed two years ago would take effect.

And last year, 60 percent of Washington voters defeated an initiative that
would have legalized a variety of drugs for medical use after opponents
raised the specter of legalized heroin.

This time around, opponents say the safeguards written into the 1998
initiatives are still insufficient. They note the measures would keep
police from seizing or destroying marijuana and growing equipment until
users have a chance to prove they had it legally.

Recent polls in Alaska, Oregon and Washington show most voters support the
measures; Nevada appears to be a close call. The Arizona initiative that
would back legislative dismantling of legalization seems to be trailing.