CONTROLLING MEDICAL POT IS NOT SUCH AN OUT-OF-CONTROL IDEA

If Medical Marijuana Seems Tough To Regulate In San Francisco, Blame The
Federal Government.

The feds are in a fix. More than two-thirds of Americans support the
legalization of marijuana for medical purposes. Every state ballot
initiative, beginning with California's Proposition 215 in 1996, has
passed, often by wide margins. Medical marijuana bills are passing in state
legislatures, often with support from Republican governors and lawmakers.

The feds can try to trip up these bills but know they can't stop them. The
White House has been able to keep Republican members of Congress in line so
far, but many don't feel they're voting their conscience when they vote
against medical marijuana.

The fallback federal obstructionist strategy is to maintain its
indefensible monopoly on marijuana for research purposes; to refuse to
allow it to be legally prescribed as a Schedule II drug; to reject efforts
by state and local governments to regulate its production and distribution;
and to intimidate local authorities who want to bring medical marijuana
fully within the law.

Keep this in mind: the medical cannabis dispensaries, or "pot clubs," exist
only because the federal government won't permit this particular medicine
to be legally produced, regulated, prescribed by doctors and sold by
pharmacies. Change federal law to allow all this and dispensaries as such
disappear.

So what's San Francisco to do until federal law is reformed?

- -- First, ensure that medical marijuana patients are not arrested, harassed
or criminalized for using their medicine. The Schwarzenegger
administration's announcement last week that it is reinstating and
expanding the medical marijuana ID-card program is good news. So is the
Drug Enforcement Administration's recent declaration that it has no
intention of going after the sick and dying.

- -- Second, ensure reasonable access to the medicine. Pot clubs provide an
important service. They should be easily accessible to patients, including
those dependent on public transit, while respecting the legitimate concerns
of neighbors. Many club operators want to collaborate with local
authorities, but that requires a real commitment by these officials not to
collaborate with federal police and prosecutors in targeting clubs that
make a good-faith effort to adhere to local regulations. Trust is essential.

- -- Third, keep looking for ways for the city to establish local cultivation
and distribution collectives, as mandated by Proposition S, approved by 62
percent of the city's voters in 2002. This will require both creative
thinking and courage from San Francisco's leaders.

The history of Dutch cannabis policy is instructive. The "coffee shop"
model in the Netherlands, where retail (but not wholesale) sale of cannabis
is de facto legal, was not legislated into existence. Rather, it evolved in
fits and starts following the decriminalization of cannabis by Parliament
in 1976, as consumers, growers and entrepreneurs negotiated and
collaborated with local police, prosecutors and other authorities to find
an acceptable middle ground. "Coffee shops" now operate throughout the
country, subject to local regulations. Troublesome shops are shut down, and
most are well integrated into local city cultures. Cannabis is no more
popular there than in the United States and other western countries,
notwithstanding its de facto legalization.

I need not belabor the analogy. All good-faith participants in San
Francisco's medical marijuana dialogue must keep in mind that they are
engaged in a historical process, embedded in the gray area of the law, that
requires balancing the human rights of patients, neighborly concerns and
the often unreasonable demands of outside political forces.

For millions of Americans, marijuana is akin to the beer, wine or martini
at the end of the workday, or the prescribed drug to alleviate depression
or anxiety, or the sleeping pill, or the aid to sexual function. More and
more Americans are apt to describe some or all of their marijuana use as
"medical" as the definition of that term evolves and broadens. Their
anecdotal experiences are increasingly backed by new scientific research
into marijuana's essential ingredients, the cannabinoids. The Lancet
Neurology, a subsidiary of Britain's leading medical journal, speculated
whether marijuana might soon emerge as the "aspirin of the 21st century,"
providing a wide array of medical benefits at low cost to diverse populations.

More and more people can now obtain a doctor's recommendation for marijuana
as easily as they obtain prescriptions for pharmaceutical drugs, and
purchase it from a club as easily as they purchase pills from a pharmacy.
What once flourished underground is now surfacing, where it can better be
taxed, controlled and regulated. That evolution needs to be managed and
encouraged, not impeded, because it may provide the best answer -- at least
in the United States -- to the question of how best to reduce the
substantial costs and harms of marijuana prohibition without inviting
significant increases in real drug abuse.

San Francisco had led the nation on medical marijuana. It may ultimately
have no choice but to also lead the nation in showing how to regulate
rather than prohibit this troublesome but remarkable product.