Pubdate: Wed, 16 Aug 2000
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact:  PO Box 120191, San Diego, CA, 92112-0191
Fax: (619) 293-1440
Website: http://www.uniontrib.com/
Forum: http://www.uniontrib.com/cgi-bin/WebX
Author: Ray Huard, Staff Writer

CLARITY SOUGHT ON RULES FOR POT USE

City Council Wants Answers Soon On Medical Marijuana

Sick and dying people who use marijuana under a doctor's advice to ease 
their symptoms shouldn't have to worry about being arrested, the San Diego 
City Council said yesterday.

"They need to be able to feel not like criminals," said Councilwoman 
Valerie Stallings.

Council members passed a resolution urging District Attorney Paul Pfingst 
to speed up work on guidelines for police throughout San Diego clarifying 
who can use marijuana for medical purposes and under what circumstances.

The guidelines are meant to implement Proposition 215, the 1996 ballot 
measure that legalized the medical use of marijuana.

"We need to expedite this. We need to make something happen," Stallings said.

Mayor Susan Golding said she expected the district attorney's work group to 
complete its recommendations by October or November.

But Deputy District Attorney Dave Lattuca, who heads the work group, 
declined to say when the recommendations would be finished.

"It is a work in progress," Lattuca said.

Stallings, who underwent surgery and chemotherapy for breast cancer in 
1996, has said she didn't use marijuana to ease her symptoms but she knew 
others who had.

"I've been there in that kind of pain so I feel a little more pressure," 
Stallings said.

At the urging of Councilwoman Christine Kehoe and more than a dozen medical 
marijuana activists, the council asked Pfingst to add doctors and medical 
marijuana patients to his Medical Marijuana Work Group, which is developing 
those guidelines.

Medical marijuana activist Steve McWilliams said the council action was "a 
massive step forward."

McWilliams and several other medical marijuana advocates have addressed the 
council at nearly every meeting for almost a year urging the city to take 
action to implement Proposition 215.

Several marijuana patients in the audience applauded following the council 
vote.

"This will hopefully open the doors," McWilliams said. Until now, he said, 
marijuana activists and physicians have been left out of discussions on how 
to implement Proposition 215.

The work group includes representatives of city police, the District 
Attorney's Office and the City Attorney's Office, Lattuca said. He said 
Pfingst would take the council's recommendation to expand the work group 
under advisement.

City officials said Proposition 215 was ambiguous on how much marijuana 
someone could legally possess and how they could get it.

The council, as part of its resolution, called for the Legislature and the 
Attorney General's Office to clarify the matter. The council also 
instructed city police to keep statistics on the medical use of marijuana 
in San Diego.

San Diego police so far have interpreted the law to mean that sick people 
or their caretakers could grow small amounts of marijuana under a doctor's 
instructions to ease pain and other medical symptoms, said Deputy City 
Attorney Paul Cooper.

But under the city police interpretation, the law does not allow 
cooperatives of cannabis clubs to grow, sell or give away marijuana for 
sick and dying people to use.

Kehoe said the guidelines being developed by the district attorney should 
allow cooperatives or provide some other way for sick people to obtain 
marijuana besides growing it themselves or having their caretaker grow it 
for them.

Council members Juan Vargas and Judy McCarty emphasized that the council 
wasn't advocating the general use of marijuana.

"We don't want our kids to think it's all right to go out and smoke 
marijuana," Vargas said.
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