DUEL OVER MEDICAL POT ESCALATES

San Francisco prosecutor vows that patients will continue to receive
marijuana, while Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren warns of reprisals.

SAN FRANCISCO--Dist. Atty. Terence Hallinan promised Monday that patients
will continue to get medical marijuana--even if the city has to distribute
it--prompting the state attorney general to threaten officials with
prosecution if that happens.

The dueling statements--Hallinan's in court documents and Dan Lungren's on
the gubernatorial campaign trail--escalated an already bristling
controversy eight days before Northern California cannabis club operators
head to federal court to defend their facilities.

Hallinan contended in court papers filed Monday that everyone from city
residents to San Francisco officials supports the use of medical marijuana
to alleviate the pain and suffering of patients with AIDS, cancer and other
ailments. If the current distribution of marijuana is disrupted, he said,
patients will die, and "what is now a reasonably well-controlled, safe
distribution system--one that has been characterized by cooperation with
city officials and one that is inspected by the Health Department--will
instead devolve into a completely unregulated, and unregulatable, public
nuisance."

To preserve the health and safety of San Francisco residents, Hallinan
wrote, San Francisco "may in the future authorize its officers to enforce a
law or municipal ordinance . . . by distributing marijuana to seriously ill
patients."

Lungren has long locked horns with Northern California cannabis club
operators and San Francisco officials over the issue of medical marijuana.
When asked Monday about such a city-run operation, Lungren retorted: "I'd
like to say I'm surprised, but I'm not." Speaking at a Sacramento campaign
appearance, Lungren noted that Proposition 215, which legalized the use of
medical marijuana in California, is strict about who may obtain and use the
drug.

The California Supreme Court recently ruled that Proposition 215 does not
provide protection for cannabis operations such as the Cannabis
Cultivator's Co-Op in San Francisco. The initiative does, however, protect
the rights of so-called primary caregivers to grow or obtain marijuana for
approved patients.

"I'd have to see under what basis" the city is acting before cracking down,
Lungren said, but "the city can't be a primary caregiver any more than a
cannabis buyers club can." Lungren's bottom line: "All I know is that I
took an oath to uphold the law . . . and I would hope San Francisco
officials do the same."

But the term "uphold the law" is open to considerable debate in a liberal
city such as San Francisco. And Hallinan, as the city's highest law
enforcement officer, made a kind of veiled threat in his legal filing about
his city's unique interpretation of the term. He noted that, if the medical
marijuana distribution centers were to close, police officers would be
forced into the arduous task of separating legitimate medical purchasers
from nonmedical purchasers.

Short of that, he said, they may "simply give up on arresting anyone
purchasing marijuana."

The federal government in January filed civil lawsuits against six cannabis
clubs and 10 of their operators in San Francisco and four other Northern
California counties in an effort to shut down the facilities. The club
operators are scheduled to appear in court on March 24. Hallinan made his
Monday comments in a friend of the court brief on their behalf in the
federal case. Times staff writer Dave Lesher in Sacramento contributed to
this story.

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