STATE POLS PUSH CONGRESS ON MEDICAL POT

SAN FRANCISCO -- Two Bay Area lawmakers are leading Sacramento's effort to
urge California's U.S. senators to secure states' rights to regulate and
oversee medical use of marijuana.

State Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, and Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San
Francisco, have co-authored a letter signed by 48 legislative colleagues
calling for an end to federal meddling in California's and other states'
medical marijuana activities.

They want Congress to amend the Controlled Substances Act to allow a medical
necessity defense -- exactly the goal of a bipartisan bill soon to be
introduced by Reps. Sam Farr, D-Carmel; Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, and Dana
Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach.

They also want Congress to cut the budgets of any federal department that
harasses, intimidates and prosecutes Californians who act under the auspices
of the state's medical marijuana law. The Drug Enforcement Agency has been
raiding medical marijuana dispensaries in the past few years, and U.S.
Attorney's offices in California have been prosecuting some of the cases;
both agencies are part of the Justice Department.

Leno unveiled the letter, addressed to Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara
Boxer and signed by 34 other Assembly members and 14 other state Senators,
at a news conference Thursday outside San Francisco's federal office
building. He announced he and Perata will introduce a legislative resolution
next week to the same effect.

"We're here, very simply, to protect Proposition 215," Leno said, referring
to the medical marijuana ballot initiative approved by 56 percent of voters
in November 1996. "The federal government continues its assault on the will
of the people of California."

Leno said the letter was inspired by the recent conviction of Oakland
marijuana grower Ed Rosenthal by a federal jury, which wasn't allowed to
consider his protection under state law and wasn't told of his protection
under an Oakland ordinance. He called it "a miscarriage of justice."

Perata wasn't at the press conference. Later Thursday, he called the
Rosenthal conviction "a huge step backward."

"It seems to me that it's a crystal-clear issue and that Congress ought to
act, and come down on the side of medicine, not crime," he said.

Leno noted that Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., probably will soon re-introduce
the same bill he has authored in each of Congress' last several sessions,
calling for marijuana to be moved to a less-restrictive list within the
Controlled Substances Act and forbidding the federal government from
interfering with states' administration of their own medical marijuana laws.

About a third of California's House delegation co-sponsored the bill during
Congress' last session, including all of the Bay Area's representatives
except Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, and Richard Pombo, R-Tracy. The bill was
referred to a House subcommittee, where it languished and never even had a
hearing.

Leno said Thursday that efforts to pressure Congress must reach far beyond
the Golden State, and Sacramento lawmakers like himself can and should work
with their peers in other state legislatures to build that pressure.