MEDICAL POT PETITIONS TO CIRCULATE

HELENA - Advocates of legalizing the medical use of marijuana will
begin collecting signatures across Montana next week on petitions
seeking to place the issue on the November ballot.

Both the secretary of state and the attorney general ruled this week
that the marijuana initiative, dubbed Initiative 148, meets legal muster.

Advocates must collect a minimum of 20,510 signatures from qualified
voters, including signatures from 5 percent of voters in at least 28
of 56 Montana's counties, by June 18 before the initiative can be
placed on the ballot.

State lawmakers killed a similar measure during their 2003
session.

Eight states - Hawaii, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada,
Colorado and Maine - have adopted laws allowing chronically ill
patients to posses, use and grow marijuana for medical purposes with a
doctor's recommendation.

Last year, Maryland reduced the penalties for chronically ill people
caught with medical marijuana, and Arizona adopted a law permitting
the use of medical marijuana with a doctor's prescription.

The Marijuana Policy Project, headquartered in Washington D.C., is
pushing the measure in Montana. Paul Befumo, a University of Montana
law school graduate and Missoula estate planner, is heading the
campaign here.

"The initiative is about simple compassion and common sense," Befumo
said Wednesday. "People fighting AIDS or cancer shouldn't suffer when
marijuana can provide relief."

Befumo, who watched his cancer-stricken father die a painful death,
said the medical use of marijuana could have helped his father keep
food down. Instead, chemotherapy made Befumo's father constantly
nauseous, and he died weighing less than 150 pounds.

"I am almost 100 percent sure it would have made his life better, even
if he died at the same time," Befumo said. "He wouldn't have suffered
as much."

If the initiative is passed by a simple majority of voters, then
patients under medical supervision could use marijuana to alleviate
the symptoms of several specific conditions including cancer,
glaucoma, HIV/AIDS or other conditions or treatments that produce
wasting, severe or chronic pain, severe nausea, seizures, severe
muscle spasms and other conditions defined by the state.

Additionally, a patient or patient's caregiver could register to grow
and possess limited amounts of marijuana by submitting to the state
written certification from a physician documenting a debilitating
medical condition that would be alleviated by marijuana use.

Befumo said volunteers and professional signature collectors will
begin soliciting signatures for the petition next week. County
election officials must receive signed initiative petitions by June
18. Election officials then have until July 16 to verify the
authenticity of the signatures and file them with the secretary of
state's office.