SAN FRANCISCO PUTS GROWING MEDICINAL MARIJUANA ON THE BALLOT

SAN FRANCISCO, July 23 - The city that helped create the proposition in
1996 that made California the first state to legalize medical marijuana may
start growing its own.

In a move toward making San Francisco the first city to defy openly the
federal ban on growing marijuana for any reason, the Board of Supervisors
approved a ballot measure on Monday that would explore growing marijuana on
public property as a way around the Federal Drug Enforcement
Administration's continual closing of medical marijuana clubs.

The measure was drafted by Supervisor Mark Leno, a Democratic candidate for
the State Assembly who said he was fed up watching federal agents shut
clubs that dispense marijuana for seriously ill and dying people.

"Our clubs have been continuously intimidated and assaulted," Mr. Leno
said, adding that one club had closed because of fear of federal prosecution.

If voters pass the measure on Nov. 5, the supervisors would be able to
explore the hows and wheres of growing marijuana. Mr. Leno suggested that
vacant city property might be used and that the program could be
agricultural job training for the unemployed.

Federal authorities were not amused. "Unless Congress changes the law and
makes marijuana a legal substance, then we have to do our job and enforce
the law," said a spokesman for the regional office of the Drug Enforcement
Administration.

The measure has a strong chance of passing. San Francisco has long been in
the forefront of expanding medical marijuana rights. The district attorney
has made the issue a chief cause. The chief of the Public Health Department
has prescribed marijuana for AIDS patients to ease side effects of
medications, and medical marijuana clubs have openly operated in
residential neighborhoods without problems.

Last year, the city declared itself a sanctuary for the use, cultivation
and distribution of medical marijuana, a symbolic defiance of an expected
federal crackdown. The state attorney general, Bill Lockyer, who has
supported the state's medical marijuana law, has left its use to local
jurisdictions. A spokeswoman suggested that Mr. Lockyer would do the same
if San Francisco began growing medicinal marijuana.