WASHINGTON SENATE PANEL HEARS TESTIMONY

By HAL SPENCER
The Associated Press

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) -- Two months after voters rejected a measure to permit
the medicinal use of marijuana, a Senate panel Tuesday night took up the
issue despite the chairman's warning that the bill was going nowhere.

"I don't intend to move the bill out of this committee," Senate Health and
Longterm Care Committee chairman Alex Deccio, R-Yakima, said before opening
testimony on SB6271.

Saying he was sympathetic to the bill's aim -- to make marijuana legally
available to sick people who benefit from it -- Deccio said he nevertheless
believed his colleagues "must be educated" about the drug's value before
trying to get a bill out of the Legislature.

"This is not the year to do it," he said.

The measure, which drew strong testimony for and against, is far narrower
than Initiative 685, which was defeated by voters last November. The
initiative also would have legalized medicinal use of heroin and LSD.

The current proposal, sponsored by Sen. Jeanne Kohl, D-Seattle, would
provide legal immunity to patients who use marijuana, physicians who
recommend it and pharmacists who provide it. The bill also would create a
campaign to inform youth that marijuana use is illegal, except in cases
involving authorized use by seriously ill people under a physician's care.

Deccio limited testimony only to marijuana's value as a medication. He said
law enforcement problems and other concerns were irrelevant until lawmakers
educated themselves on the drug's efficacy as a medication.

Among other things, the drug is used to combat nausea caused by
chemotherapy, loss of appetite among gravely ill people such as AIDS
patients and intractable pain among people with disorders of the nervous
system.

Some physicians and patients swear by it, but others say its effects are
exaggerated or unproven.

Dr. Rob Killian, a Tacoma physician and sponsor of the failed initiative to
legalize medicinal use of marijuana and other drugs, said his "first
obligation is to relieve suffering," and marijuana does that for some of
his patients.

"I've seen it work in patients when other drugs didn't work," he said.

For AIDS patients who are wasting away because they have no appetite or
cannot eat, the drug "stimulates their appetite. They eat, they perk up."

But Pat Aaby, Lt. Gov. Brad Owen's chief adviser, was skeptical. He said
his boss, who campaigned hard against the initiative, wanted to see more
proof that marijuana is beneficial for some ailments. Owen supports more
research, but not the bill, Aaby said.