SAN FRANCISCO WEEDS OUT PRISON TIME FOR POT ARRESTS

First-Time Offenders Now Face Penalties Ranging From Fines To Community Service

SAN FRANCISCO -- Nearly every day, Thom Bateman helps dole out San
Francisco-style justice to people caught with small amounts of marijuana.
Each case takes less time than it would to smoke a joint.

If the culprit is a regular citizen who has been found, say, lighting up in
the bleachers at a ball game, the case takes about a minute.

"If that's the end of the story, it's 'Okay, sir, that's $135 or two days
of community service. Have a nice day,' " Mr. Bateman said, describing the
tone and speed of a typical first-time possession charge in San Francisco.

People caught with less than 28.5 grams of marijuana in this California
city renowned for its liberal views and activist citizenry are summoned, at
a time that suits them, to community courts convened in church basements
and community centres.

A panel of neighbourhood residents acts as judge and jury.

Under California law, a marijuana-possession charge is a misdemeanour, but
in San Francisco, it won't land you in the criminal-justice system. If you
pay the fine, the conviction is erased after a year.

It was the brainchild of San Francisco district attorney Terence Hallinan
- -- a former defence lawyer who has a testy reputation with his own police
department -- who decreed that petty pot charges shouldn't be clogging the
courts.

With that, Mr. Hallinan -- who is on record as wanting to legalize all
marijuana use -- made San Francisco the most liberal county in the United
States for people caught with small amounts of the drug.

The system is based on the same rationale the Liberal government used when
it introduced a bill last week to decriminalize pot possession in Canada:
Recreational users caught with small amounts shouldn't be branded with a
lifelong criminal record if they're not trafficking or growing marijuana.

Canada's proposed threshold for avoiding a criminal conviction is lower
than California's, at less than 15 grams.

San Francisco's fine-paying system could be Canada's future.

Mr. Bateman, a cigar-smoking former arbitrator who runs the community-court
system, applauded Canada's move, saying marijuana users don't belong in jail.

From what he's seen, "they're like you or me. They're kids. There isn't a
stereotype. In California, there's an awful lot of people who smoke."

If the ticketed person is a drug addict, the panel will hand out pamphlets
on where to seek help. Students might be warned not to buy from someone
they don't know.

But Mr. Bateman said the community courts aren't trying to steer marijuana
users from the drug.

"Do I think a college kid from San Francisco State University that smoked a
joint and got caught is never going to smoke a joint again?" he asked in an
interview at the program's downtown storefront office. "Ha! That means I
should be smoking the stuff."

The district attorney's office doesn't keep statistics on how many
pot-possession charges are processed each year, since they are not felony
crimes. But a spokesman guessed it was fewer than 200.

"We're not going to spend a lot of time on this," Mr. Bateman continued.

"And there's nothing real wrong with that. We want to keep people out of
the system."

Despite San Francisco's liberal attitude, users are not ubiquitous as are
those in Vancouver, the other West Coast city with a history of tolerating
marijuana use. There, users smoke openly on the street and in parks,
particularly in the downtown West End.

At the corner of San Francisco's Haight and Ashbury streets, the epicentre
of the U.S. counterculture movement in the 1960s, there is a Gap store now
- -- but no pot smokers.

During the Summer of Love in 1967, the famous intersection down the street
from Golden Gate Park drew thousands of young people who set up camp and
used drugs openly.

Today, it has a tourist feel, dotted with high-end boutiques, Internet
cafes and bookshops. In the park itself, one sunny afternoon this week, the
only smell of grass was the mowed kind.

The pipe stores are still around, papered with literature railing against
the U.S. war on drugs, but shop owners don't want to talk about marijuana.
A sign in one store warned customers not to mention the word "pot" or they
won't be served.

They say they don't want to rile federal drug-enforcement officials, who
have made no bones about criticizing California's attitude toward marijuana
use.

"I guess you could [smoke on the street], but you'd be dumb," said a
pipe-store owner when asked whether people openly use marijuana in San
Francisco.

The leeriness, activists say, is the result of President George W. Bush's
aggressive antidrug policy, which has linked drug use to terrorism and
taken issue with states, such as California, that allow the medicinal use
of marijuana. Even though California has allowed pot clubs since 1996, the
federal government has ignored the state statute and raided and arrested
growers who sell to clubs that dispense pot to people with chronic illnesses.

"I sense that the federal government continues to feel that marijuana
should be a big part of the war on drugs and are anxious to arrest people
who use it," said Michael Menecini, the manager of the San Francisco
district attorney's misdemeanour-trial team. "They're upset with
California. They're upset with Canada."

Last week in Washington, John Walters, the White House director of
drug-control policy, warned that Ottawa's new legislation could lead to
increased exports of marijuana from Canada to the United States.

But the San Francisco district attorney's office has no intention of
changing its position. "There's a culture here that believes that the usage
of marijuana is not the worst possible offence you can commit," Mr.
Menecini said.

"The hippie kid with a half an ounce of marijuana in his pocket, if he's
not breaking the law, the chances of prosecuting him are minus 150 per
cent, if you could even catch him."

In the United States, far more than in Canada, the result of the federal
crackdown, the grow-op busts and the warning from the Drug Enforcement
Administration has been to make cannabis use a political act, with lines
firmly drawn and the enemy identified.

In San Francisco, marijuana activists sound much like religious zealots,
using reverential language to describe their lifestyle and their leaders.

Last year, Mr. Hallinan told an annual conference of the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws that marijuana is not only
good medicine but "unquestionably part of the religious experience."

Comments such as those have given him the status of prophet among cannabis
activists.

"Terence Hallinan, he's a hell of a man, a hero," said Jesse Burke, sitting
on a couch at the Compassion and Care Center, one of 13 cafes that dispense
marijuana to patients with cancer, AIDS and other chronic illnesses.

Only patients with cards issued by the city's health department are allowed
past the centre's front desk in the city's gritty Mission district. Mr.
Burke, 48, is an epileptic who smokes pot to control his seizures. He was
joined by Wayne Justmann, a fast-talking former teacher and bodyguard, now
a full-time marijuana activist.

Mr. Justmann, 58, who has been HIV-positive for 15 years, smokes marijuana
to alleviate numbness in his limbs. But he started smoking it 30 years ago,
long before he became sick.

Like many activists, he elevates marijuana use to a spiritual experience
and likens its users to downtrodden scapegoats.

"Look at these people," he said, gesturing at the subdued crowd in the
shabby, smoke-filled room. "These are real folks. We vote. We pay rent. We
just want a little relief."

Mr. Justmann, an Iowa native, said he moved to San Francisco because of its
tolerance toward marijuana use. "Thank God for what we have here."