LIGHT UP, IF YOU DARE

No Butts About It

Cigarette-smokers and marijuana-smokers may have nothing more in
common than the occasional need to borrow matches, but they're on
the same side in California today: the outside.

San Diego has just joined 35 other California cities with ordinances
prohibiting anyone from lighting up on the beach. Aside from
secondhand smoking concerns, they're fed up with butt litter. San
Diego has nothing on San Francisco, of course. A year ago, the city
by the bay adopted the most restrictive outdoor smoking ban
anywhere in the United States. Violators are presumably put on
public display, padlocked in stocks in Golden Gate Park.

Though San Francisco has long been a haven for leftist-leaning types
(who are, coincidentally enough, often pot smokers), marijuana
advocates also find themselves on the defensive there. The city's
Planning Commission voted Thursday to deny a permit for medicinal
marijuana sales near the Fisherman's Wharf tourist district.
California legalized marijuana sales for pain treatment in 1996 to
those with doctor's recommendations (10 other non-Pennsylvania
states have since followed suit), but cities may restrict where
the outlets are located.

Potheads Go Home

The 20 or more marijuana outlets operating in San Francisco are under
tighter new city regulations that could make things less groovy for
them. Neighbors of cannabis clubs have complained that some people
with so-called medical needs purchase the marijuana just to resell
it, and so the outlets draw an unsavory element, not to mention
ill-groomed Cheech and Chong impersonators.

"The nature of pot clubs right now brings an element that's not
appropriate," one Fisherman's Wharf area resident told the San
Francisco Planning Commission. "This is a family neighborhood -- it's
not right for such an adult-oriented and, to a great degree,
counter-culture environment." The obvious solution would be for all
those darned families to move out, so the pot-smokers and proprietors
could have their space to do what they want, but no one ever seems to
be so practical at such meetings.

Hard To Think Straight

California calls its 1996 medicinal marijuana law the Compassionate
Use Act, intended to benefit people with cancer and AIDS rather than
young stoners. If that's true, the federal government is --
shockingly -- very short on compassion.

Federal law, upheld by U.S. Supreme Court rulings, makes no
distinction between medical use of marijuana and using it to become
goofy/reckless/murderous/(insert your own favored adjective here,
depending on your personal beliefs about the drug). Federal
authorities can prosecute medical marijuana patients even if users
believe they're doing what's permitted under state law, and the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Agency sometimes does so, but mostly doesn't. The
inconsistency makes things a little confusing or dizzying or any of
those other effects rumored to take place when someone is undergoing
"reefer madness."

Some cities in California have set up regulations for medical
marijuana dispensaries with various degrees of restriction, some have
prohibited them to conform with federal law, and others have enacted
moratoriums while awaiting some potential agreement among state and
federal authorities. "It's a fascinating kind of game that's being
played out," Hastings College law professor Marsha Cohen told the
Contra Costa Times, describing a "shadow medical system" surrounding
medical marijuana.

Clearing Nothing Up

Just to add to the confusion, private researchers and the government
lack consensus on either marijuana's potential harm or potential benefits.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse suggests that aside from
potential cognitive and motor effects, cancer of the respiratory
tract and lungs may be promoted by marijuana smoke. Considering the
deep inhalation, the institute says, "puff for puff, smoking
marijuana may increase the risk of cancer more than smoking tobacco does."

But an extensive UCLA study released last month addressing that very
issue found no correlation. Heavy pot users among the baby boomers
surveyed had no elevated cancer risk, while people who smoked two or
more packs of cigarettes a day had a 20-fold increased risk of lung cancer.

At the same time, advocates of medicinal marijuana contend it helps
certain patients, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said this
year there were "no sound scientific studies" to support that, even
though a 1999 government panel found marijuana "moderately well
suited for particular conditions, such as chemotherapy-induced nausea
and vomiting and AIDS wasting."

So there you have it, a muddled, hazy, picture of a substance that
may or may not be legal and which may or may not hurt or help you,
depending on your condition. Consider it just one more public service
of The Morning File.