PLAN IN WORKS FOR FIRST PUBLIC POT CLINIC

By Alan Gathright
Mercury News Staff Writer

San Mateo County supervisors unanimously agreed Tuesday to craft a proposal
to dispense contraband marijuana for medicinal use at public clinics while
resuming a ban on private ``cannabis clubs.''

Board President Mike Nevin, who proposed creating the country's first
governmentrun medicinal marijuana program, hoped to have a proposal by
early next year. The plan for a oneyear trial of the county dispensary
will be presented to state Attorney General Dan Lungren, an archfoe of
cannabis clubs who has shown enough interest in Nevin's idea that he has
assigned a staff attorney to work on the proposal.

A public dispensary would require special state legislation. Nevin said he
contacted state Sen. John Vasconcellos, DSan Jose, Tuesday, asking him to
include the county project in legislation for a threeyear study on the
effectiveness of medicinal marijuana. Lungren supports the legislation.

Supervisors agreed to create a committee, involving county supervisors, law
enforcement officials, healthcare professionals and the department of
justice attorney, to develop the proposal. The committee will also develop
guidelines for issuing identity cards to patients and their caregivers to
help them avoid arrest for using and growing small amounts of medicinal
marijuana.

Sheriff Don Horsley gave wholehearted support for the public dispensaries,
telling the board: ``I believe that is the most humane approach that I can
think of to help the terminally ill, and people with AIDS and glaucoma.''

County officials hope to lead California out of the legal confusion created
by state voters' passage last year of Proposition 215, which allowed
physicians' approval of medicinal marijuana for seriously ill people, but
gave no direction to cities and counties on how to distribute pot.

The initiative allowed for patients to have marijuana grown by vaguely
defined ``primary caregivers,'' giving rise to socalled cannabis clubs,
which sell pot. Yet, it remains illegal under state and federal laws to
transport and distribute marijuana for any reason.

The attorney general and several counties have declared cannabis clubs
illegal, but a trial court judge denied Lungren's request to shut down San
Francisco's club. Officials in San Jose, Oakland and Berkeley have allowed
clubs to operate under police scrutiny.

Despite the plea Tuesday by an entrepreneur to let him open a forprofit
pot dispensary for a six month trial in unincorporated North Fair Oaks,
supervisors agreed with legal officials that public and private marijuana
clinics remain illegal, and the board extended a ban imposed Oct. 7 on
cannabis clubs for 10 months.

``I just hope that you don't set this issue on the back burner for a
year,'' said a disappointed Salvador Garcia, who did not deliver on his
promised protest at the sparsely attended meeting. ``These people have
major concerns, they're dying and they can't eat.''

An official for a nonprofit San Jose marijuana dispensary said Lungren and
San Mateo County officials are wasting time and money trying to ``reinvent
the wheel'' while some 20 private pot clinics across California are serving
the pressing needs of an estimated 20,000 patients.