MEDICAL MARIJUANA INITIATIVE CLEARS EARLY LEGAL HURDLES

HELENA - Advocates for 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 Montana's 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 Montana's 56 counties by June 18 before the initiative can be
placed on the ballot.

State lawmakers killed a similar measure seeking legalization of
medical use of marijuana during the 2003 session.

Eight states - Hawaii, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada,
Colorado and Maine - have adopted laws allowing chronically ill
patients to possess, use and grow marijuana for medical purposes if
they have 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 in a phone interview 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 Montana marijuana 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 or other conditions as defined by the state.

Additionally, a patient or a 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 benefit from 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 petition signatures and file them with the secretary
of state's office.

The communications director for the national Marijuana Policy Project
said people - more so than lawmakers - approve of the medical use of
marijuana.

"The public is consistently in support of allowing seriously ill
people to use medical marijuana," Bruce Mirken said from his San
Francisco office Wednesday. "What we have, frankly, is a small group
of drug war fanatics in Washington, D.C., who are just absolutely dug
into an ideological position. They refuse to look at the science or
the simple common sense."

If passed, Initiative 148 would be effective upon voter approval.