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Charles Wynott stood in front of a room full of lawmakers
Monday and acknowledged breaking the law.

Every morning, he said, he swallows six pills and chases
them by smoking a pipe packed with marijuana. He uses the
pills to combat the effects he suffers from the virus that
causes AIDS. He uses the marijuana to combat the effects of
the pills.

During an afternoon public hearing, Wynott and 10 other
people asked members of the Legislature's Joint Standing
Committee on Health and Human Services to pass one of two
bills that would legalize marijuana in Maine for
medicinal purposes.

No one spoke against the bills, although three state
officials the commissioner of public safety, the director
of the state Bureau of Health and the director of the state
Office of Substance Abuse issued a statement opposing
them.

During the hearing the only one that committee members
must hold two current marijuana users and one former user
told very personal stories.

Bryan Clark, a 23yearold Portland man who has had
hemophilia since birth and HIV since he was 11, said that
if it were not for marijuana, he would be unable to eat.

Because of marijuana, Clark said, he now weighs 140
pounds. Before he used marijuana, the 5foot10inch man
weighed 118 pounds. ''If I am able to eat, and keep weight
on me, my body is able to fight off infections,'' he told
the committee.

Mike Lindey, a 65yearold retired veterinarian from
Freeport, told of positive effects of the drug in dealing
with cancer.

''I never was a drug consumer myself until I got
cancer,'' he said. ''I had never had marijuana before in my
life. I never had any interest.''

An aggressive course of surgery and chemotherapy has
cleared the cancer from his body, and Lindey has since
stopped using marijuana. But he urged legislators to make
the drug legal for other cancer patients.

''Every operation four operations I was given
morphine drip for pain,'' Lindey said. ''I never developed
an interest in morphine. I never developed an interest in
mari juana as a recreational drug.''

The hearing was frequently emotional. Rep. Kathleen
Stevens, the Orono Democrat who sponsored one of the bills,
wept during her presentation.

But it was technical, too. John P. Morgan, a physician
and professor of pharmacology at the City University of New
York Medical School and member of the board of directors of
the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws,
discussed the drug's beneficial uses.

He said that marinol, a legal pill containing
Delta9THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, is
ineffective in treating nausea. He discussed the difference
between smoking marijuana and tobacco, concluding that
marijuana is less harmful because people smoke less of it.

''It is a quite, quite good drug,'' said Morgan, whose
wife has multiple sclerosis. Muscle spasticity, which
occurs with that disease, can be treated with marijuana.

Sen. Judy Paradis, DFrenchville, the committee
cochairwoman, said she found most of the speakers
compelling. But one speaker, Donald Christen of Madison,
raised her ire.

Christen, who pleaded guilty to trafficking in marijuana
in 1985, testified in support of the bills. ''Aren't you
concerned that your involvement might jeopardize'' the
bills, she asked Christen, as several legislators nodded in
agreement.

Christen said he had no such concerns. ''I'm not a
criminal,'' he said.

Maine legislators passed a medical marijuana bill in
1991, but thenGov. John McKernan, a Republican, vetoed it.

Gov. Angus King, an independent, has said he is
''skeptical but openminded'' about medicinal marijuana.

Even if lawmakers legalize marijuana for medicinal
purposes in Maine, the drug will remain illegal under
federal law, a point made in the opponents' statement.

Members of the committee will meet again Wednesday to
discuss the bills. Although that meeting will be open to
the public, members have no plans to allow public comment.

FOR LINKS to Internet information on medical marijuana,
see the Press Herald's World Wide Web site:
www.portland.com