PUSHING TO LEGALIZE `MIRACLE HERB' D.C. ACTIVISTS SEEK SIGNATURES FOR
MEDICAL MARIJUANA INITIATIVE

By Julie Makinen Bowles
Washington Post Staff Writer

Chet Layman was 9 years old when a teenage driver hit him headon while he
was helping a friend deliver newspapers on his bicycle. The 1972 accident
left him comatose for 29 days, severely damaged his optic nerve and caused
him to lose 90 percent of his field of vision.

The legally blind Layman, now a 34yearold Northwest Washington resident,
still gets severe headaches sometimes. He has tried numerous prescription
drugs to relieve the intense pain, but he finds that only one thing really
works: marijuana.

"It's a miracle herb," he said. It is also illegal, and that's why Layman
was pounding the pavement last week in Southeast Washington.

He and a handful of other city activists are trying to gather 17,010
signatures from D.C. voters by Dec. 8 to put a medical marijuana initiative
on the ballot next year.

They say they have collected about 12,000 signatures so far, including
Mayor Marion Barry's.

The measure, known as Initiative 57, would legalize possession, use,
cultivation and distribution of marijuana if "recommended" by a doctor for
illnesses such as AIDS, cancer and glaucoma. It also would require the city
to provide for the "safe and affordable" distribution of marijuana to
Medicaid patients and other poor people whose doctors recommend it.

Similar in many ways to a ballot measure passed last year by California
voters, Initiative 57 has made the District the latest venue for the long
standing debate over marijuana and efforts to legalize it.

But the city's role as the nation's capital has drawn particular attention
to the issue. Federal officials and several prominent politicians are
decrying the measure, arguing that marijuana's medicinal properties are
unproven and that its legalization for medical purposes would shield
illegal activity and promote drug abuse.

"Our nation's capital has been inundated by waves of drugs," Barry R.
McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy, said in a recent opinion piece. "D.C. voters should say `yes' to
themselves and to our country by voting `no' on drugs."

Former GOP presidential candidate Malcolm S. "Steve" Forbes has called
initiative organizers "twisted drug predators." The conservative advocacy
group he leads has been running antiInitiative 57 ads on local radio
stations for months.

But among local residents in heavily Democratic Washington, the measure has
stirred little controversy. In addition to support from Barry (D), who was
convicted several years ago of misdemeanor cocaine possession, D.C. Council
Chairman Linda W. Cropp (D) and council members Kevin P. Chavous (DWard
7), Charlene Drew Jarvis (DWard 4) and Jack Evans (DWard 2), chairman of
the Judiciary Committee, have signed petitions to put the issue on the ballot.

Unlike the highly organized campaign in California spearheaded by a
group called Americans for Medical Rights and bankrolled by such tycoons as
George Soros the D.C. effort is being run on a shoestring budget by
local AIDS activists Steve Michael and Wayne Turner.

Michael, who is HIVpositive but said he does not use marijuana, launched
the initiative last year after the District's thenU.S. Attorney Eric H.
Holder Jr., who is now deputy attorney general, called for toughening the
city's marijuana laws. Under D.C. law, one of the most liberal in the
country, a person arrested for selling marijuana can be charged only with a
misdemeanor, punishable at most by a year in jail and a $10,000 fine.
Simple possession carries a maximum $1,000 fine, and firsttime offenders
are eligible for probation.

No stiffer marijuana measures have been enacted in the District. Still,
Michael said, "it's just not acceptable for people who are sick to risk
real jail time for buying medicine they need."

Many doctors believe marijuana can help people with cancer and AIDS by
relieving the side effects of treatment. Studies have shown that oral doses
of its active ingredient, THC, can reduce nausea and vomiting caused by
chemotherapy or other drugs. Marinol, a pill form of THC, was approved by
the Food and Drug Administration in 1985, but some patients say it can be
too potent or not potent enough.

If the initiative makes it onto the ballot and is approved by voters, it is
not clear how many seriously ill D.C. residents would benefit. Officials at
the WhitmanWalker Clinic, the city's largest provider of AIDSrelated
services, have given qualified support to the measure but say only a few of
their patients report using either marijuana or Marinol.

Stephen Smith, founder of the Cannabis Buyer's Club of Washington, said
that in the mid1990s his group served several hundred people, about 80
percent of whom had AIDS. Although the club largely disbanded when Smith
became ill and new AIDS drugs have improved the health of many people,
"there is still a need out there," said Smith, who is not involved with the
initiative.

Should Initiative 57 fall short of the signatures it needs to get on the
ballot, the issue probably won't go away. Officials with Americans for
Medical Rights, which is sponsoring medical marijuana campaigns in
Colorado, Maine and other states next year, say they intend to draft
another initiative

for the District and run a major campaign.

"We think it is important to put this in front of D.C. voters and the
national stage it represents," said Dave Fratello, a spokesman for the
group. "We have people working on this right now."

But even if a marijuana measure is approved by D.C. voters, Congress has
the authority to review any proposed legislation. Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R
N.C.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the District,
already has introduced a bill that would direct the attorney general to
revoke the medical license of any practitioner who recommends marijuana to
a patient.

"I know people with AIDS, and I know what marijuana can do for them," Ed
Church, 42, said last week as he signed the Initiative 57 petition in front
of the Capitol Hill post office on Pennsylvania Avenue SE. "But Congress,
they'd never allow it. Jesse Helms would hold hearings on it forever."