PA. BILL WOULD LEGALIZE MARIJUANA AS THERAPEUTIC OPTION

They're lighting up joints in Bryn Mawr and Squirrel Hill after
putting the kids to bed.

At Abay, an ultra-hip eatery in East Liberty, pro-medical marijuana
activists are recruiting and organizing new members over martinis.

And in Harrisburg, some legislators are pushing for passage of a bill
that would make Pennsylvania the 15th state to legalize medical
marijuana -- if New York and Maryland don't beat them to it.

Pot is hot.

Long known as America's most widely used illicit drug, marijuana is
no longer just a habit for aging baby boomers reliving the '60s.
Fragile multiple sclerosis sufferers and chemo patients swear by it.
In the movies, positive images abound: In "It's Complicated," Santa
Barbara matron Meryl Streep gets stoned to hilarious effect, while on
television's "Nurse Jackie," Edie Falco helps a chemo patient fashion
a bong for his joint.

While U.S. marijuana use has shown a consistent decline since the
mid-1990s, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, that
trend has stalled, with prevalence rates the same in 2009 as they
were five years ago.

And back in the real world, affluent forty-somethings are lighting up
after work, giving new meaning to "Happy Hour."

Just ask Lisa (not her real name).

"Let me shut the door," she said during a telephone interview from
her Downtown office where she works for a financial institution. A
self-described "urban professional and mom" and wife of a successful
lawyer, she likes to sit in her sleek, granite-and-maple kitchen in
Squirrel Hill on Friday nights and de-stress with a joint.

"I do it once a week," Lisa said. "It's a nice release from the
week's tensions, and I can feel my body calming down -- and it's less
calories than wine," she added with a laugh.

Even as the drug war continues to rage along our nation's borders and
the Drug Enforcement Administration's website declares marijuana to
be "dangerous," even as Congress refuses to repeal its declaration
that smoked marijuana is without "current medical benefit,"
recreational use of marijuana has continued unabated in this country.

Now, California -- the first state to allow medical marijuana use --
will vote in November on a ballot initiative legalizing all pot use.

A new RAND Corp. study released last week found, however, that while
legalizing marijuana could increase consumption, it would also cut
the drug's price by as much as 80 percent -- making it unlikely that
the cash-strapped state will realize projections for $1 billion in revenue.

If legalization regulating and taxing the sale of pot passes -- and a
recent California poll found support for the measure at more than 50
percent -- other states will surely follow.

Just not Pennsylvania.

A recent Franklin & Marshall poll found that 81 percent of
Pennsylvanians supported making medical marijuana legal -- up from 76
percent in 2006. But a medical marijuana bill was introduced only a
year ago in the state House and Senate, and the Democratic and
Republican candidates for governor oppose it.

The measure has not come up for a vote in either chamber. Still,
medical marijuana's passage in Pennsylvania is only a matter of time,
said Mark Cohen, D-Philadelphia, sponsor of the House bill.

"There's real momentum" for the bill, said Mr. Cohen, whose father
suffers from Crohn's disease. The time has come, he believes, to
expand medical options to alleviate patient suffering, citing
research that has found marijuana can be therapeutic in treating
Crohn's, cancer, glaucoma and other debilitating conditions.

Karen would agree. A restaurant manager in Westmoreland County who
asked that her real name not be used, she has suffered from bulimia
for the past 10 years. In addition to therapy, she's found that
marijuana is more effective than antidepressants at soothing her
stomach and increasing her desire to eat.

"I was on Xanax, but it irritated my stomach, and it's easy to get
hooked on, whereas with marijuana, if I miss a day, it's not the end
of the world," she said. "I'm not going to go out and rob a bank so I
can get some."

All of this may be true, but what really seems to be driving the bill
is the need for new revenue. The RAND report notwithstanding, a tax
on medical marijuana could add millions to state coffers that weren't
there before. Plus, the fact that so many other states have passed
similar laws -- most recently New Jersey, on whom Pennsylvania's law
is based, plus pending approval by New York, Maryland, Minnesota and
New Hampshire -- may improve the bill's chances, he said.

"Combined with New Jersey, that will mean we're all but surrounded,"
said Mr. Cohen.

Still, he hastened to add, Pennsylvania will not follow California's
example in administering the law.

In Los Angeles, dubbed "The Wild West of Weed" by Newsweek last fall,
medical marijuana dispensaries have popped up on every corner. There
have been robberies and shootings at the cash-only shops, and
otherwise healthy young people with "back pain" are wangling
permission from unscrupulous doctors to obtain the drug.

Under proposed legislation, Pennsylvania's program would be far more
restrictive, Mr. Cohen said, with jurisdiction over it assigned to
the state's Departments of Revenue and Health. It would permit
personal cultivation of up to six plants and would establish a
distribution system regulated by the health department.

"Pennsylvania has a very active medical board of licensure," he said,
"and I'm sure nothing will happen like California, where you've got
doctors located a few steps from the beach."

Still, it would face a likely veto from whoever occupies the
governor's office. Both Democrat Dan Onorato and Republican Tom
Corbett oppose medical marijuana legislation, and many law
enforcement officials remain adamantly adverse to it -- even if
police in the Pittsburgh area and Philadelphia don't pursue cases
involving first-time offenses and small amounts of the drug as
aggressively as other drug cases.

The tendency is to work them out as summary offenses, said Mike
Manko, a spokesman for District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr.,
adding, however, that "any time a drug case comes in, even at
preliminary hearing level, they'll always check with our narcotics
unit to make sure this isn't someone known to them."

In Philadelphia's jammed courts, marijuana arrests are usually the
last cases to be heard during the day, and because an arresting
officer can't wait for hours, the judge usually just throws out the
case, said Lynn Abraham, that city's former district attorney and a
vocal opponent of efforts to loosen marijuana laws, including medical
marijuana.

"Why is it that in California most people using it are 20 to 35 years
old? Give me a break. Is this what we want to become in
Pennsylvania?" she asked. "A pleasure palace? Yikes. We're just going
to turn into a bunch of spoiled, self-indulgent dope heads."

Others in the field of drug addiction oppose the bill for different
reasons. Medical marijuana's efficacy should be determined by
scientific research and the FDA approval process, not by politicians,
said Dr. Neil Capretto, medical director of Gateway Rehabilitation Center.

"I do believe marijuana has medicinal properties, so let's evaluate
it like other medicines," he said.

That's just the problem, pro-pot activists said -- federal drug
policies don't allow research into smoked marijuana.

Because marijuana is classified by federal statute as a Schedule I
drug -- along with heroin -- researchers are prohibited from
providing it to study participants , although compounds extracted
from cannabis can be used in clinical trials. Marinol, a synthetic
version of pot's active ingredient, THC, is available by prescription
for relieving nausea, and Sativex, which contains THC and other
cannabinoids, is undergoing FDA scrutiny. If made available, it may
be so effective for MS and cancer sufferers it may make the medical
marijuana debate moot.

Scientific research into marijuana's risks has found that smoking
marijuana does damage the lungs, and it can impair brain function for
longer periods of time than alcohol while driving. And while pot is
not considered physically addictive for most adults, pot smoking can
be risky for young people.

A current study at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School's
Department of Psychiatry has recruited 20 people -- half of them
heavy pot smokers -- to explore whether smoking marijuana under age
14 increases the risk of schizophrenia, as has been indicated in some studies.

The Obama administration has declared it will not use federal money
to prosecute low-level medical marijuana cases as long as the
defendants are complying with state law. But federal drug policy
remains unchanged and marijuana's legalization remains so politically
fraught that it makes "any rational approach unlikely," said Peter
Cohen, a physician and an adjunct law professor at Georgetown
University who has written extensively on the issue.

"It will be interesting to see what the Department of Justice does
should recreational marijuana be legalized," he said. If California
makes all pot use legal, "at that point there will be a direct
conflict between state and federal law, and the Obama administration
will probably have no choice but to take action against California's
legalization.

Patrick Nightingale, a local attorney and head of the Pittsburgh
chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
said his group isn't using medical marijuana as a stalking horse for
future legalization of all marijuana use.

At a recent meeting with medical marijuana supporters, he vigorously
urged recruits to get involved with efforts to lobby legislators for
passage of a medical-use bill.

It was, in fact, the proverbial smoke-filled back room -- in this
case, the cave-like Abay bar in East Liberty -- where incense curled
languorously from ashtrays and mostly young, healthy-looking people
lounged on banquettes. Carefully balancing a martini, Mr. Nightingale
walked through the state's legislation and asked for volunteers.

A lot of people raised their hands, and, in fact, public reaction
across the state in favor of the bill has been overwhelming.

"I've been here 25 years, and I've never seen more public reaction to
any bill," said Leon Czikowsky, an aide to Mr. Cohen.

No surprise there: Pro-pot activists are a highly vocal,
well-organized, well-funded constituency, as the Obama administration
found to its chagrin during the transition after the 2008 election
when it created an online site for people to submit ideas to the
president under a "crowdsourcing" model in which the "best-rated"
ideas would rise to the top.

The highest ranking idea? Legalization of marijuana -- along with
revoking the Church of Scientology's tax-exempt status.