LAWSUIT REIGNITES MEDICINAL MARIJUANA DEBATE IN DISTRICT

District advocates of the use of medical marijuana filed suit in U.S.
District Court today to put the issue back on ballots next November, four
years after an identical referendum set off a confrontation with Congress
on home rule.

Two advocacy groups are looking to the court for an injunction against a
congressional amendment that effectively blocks the city from putting the
issue before voters again, although 69 percent of D.C. residents supported
the medical use of marijuana in a 1998 vote.

"This is a clear First Amendment, free-speech issue," said Alexei
Silverman, a lawyer for the Marijuana Policy Project and the Medical
Marijuana Initiative Committee, the two groups backing the lawsuit. "D.C.
residents have the right to voice their opinion and their vision of what
the laws in their city should be."

Voters in 1998 made it clear that they wanted to join a handful of states a
" eight, so far a " who have legalized the cultivation, possession, use and
distribution of marijuana for patients of serious illnesses whose physician
recommended it. Proponents of the law cite the drug's usefulness in
alleviating pain associated with AIDS, multiple-sclerosis, cancer and other
diseases.

But the White House's national drug policy office, along with several
medical associations, have said the evidence of those benefits is not
conclusive enough to merit a change in the law. Many members of Congress
have said such use sends a conflicting signal during the nation's "war on
drugs."

So when District residents voted on Initiative 59, congressional overseers
immediately passed a law that banned the drug's use for medical purposes in
the nation's capital, no matter what the ballot said. It took more than a
year before a U.S. District court judge ruled that the ballots from the
referendum could even be counted.

U.S. Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) then sponsored a rider on the District's
appropriation bill, renewed annually, that barred public funds from being
used to put the issue on any ballot in the future. The city's Board of
Elections and Ethics ruled last week that the amendment proHbited them from
doing preliminary work on putting the amendment on next year's ballot.

That step led to today's lawsuit.

"We're seeking a temporary restraining order that will at least allow us to
collect the 16,000 signatures we need to qualify the issue for another
referendum," said Robert Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy
Project. "To be on the November ballot, everything has to be in place by May."

The results of Initiative 59 are still valid, the group acknowledged. But
the advocates suggested that they believe those results were unlikely to be
allowed into law by the Bush administration.

Meanwhile, some patients of painful diseases say the drug's use is entirely
medicinal, not a loophole around the law for recreational smokers.

"I have terrible pain in my nerves and joints, but I don't want to be
arrested," said Candida Fraze, a District multiple sclerosis patient who is
also a named plaintiff in the lawsuit. "I would like the opportunity to try
marijuana to alleviate some of the symptoms I have. . . . [Congress'
position] seems to be archaic and lacking in any sense of compassion."