Pubdate: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA) Contact: Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/ Author: Terence Hallinan Note: Terence Hollinan is the district attorney of San Francisco. LET HEALTH WORKERS DISTRIBUTE POT The recent shutdown of San Francisco's Cannabis Cultivators Club and its reopening under new leadership closed a chapter in the continuing debate over medical marijuana. Broader legal questions about the clubs remain. State and federal efforts to close six medical marijuana cooperatives in California have raised the thorny question of who should be responsible for distributing medical marijuana to sick patients if the clubs are permanently shut down. Recently, when 1 suggested city health workers may be called on to do the job in San Francisco, I did not make the statement lightly. Such a plan already has the support of the city Health Commission and many of our elected officials. We stand behind the will of California voters, who, in 1996, approved the medicinal use of marijuana. To make that right effective, patients must have safe access, not criminal access to marijuana. As the top law enforcement officer for San Francisco, it is my job to ensure that law is upheld. I know from my years on the city Board of Supervisors that marijuana provides relief to many seriously ill people. Unfortunately, the ballot language of Proposition 215 left vague how local communities should make marijuana accessible for those who need it. So far, in San Francisco, cannabis cooperatives have been the most viable and safest distribution system available. These clubs screen applicants to ensure that they are genuine patients in medical need and work closely with local health and police departments to guard against abuse. My office has inspected community based distribution centers in our county and found them to be in compliance with protocol adopted by the city Health Commission. The federal government, however, is set on shutting down the San Francisco centers along with cannabis clubs in Oakland, Ukiah, Santa Cruz and Marin County. The government says the supremacy of federal law is more important than the suffering of dying patients - and they have a strong ally in state attorney general Dan Lungren. Lungren, with his eye set on the governor's seat, has been a staunch opponent of medical marijuana long before Proposition 215 even came to a vote. Now he is warning that there will be reprisals against city officials if the city assumes responsibility for distributing medical marijuana. The threats are completely misplaced. Community-based patient cooperatives are a valuable public health service, distributing marijuana to about 11,000 San Franciscans who suffer from cancer, AIDS and other life-threatening and debilitating illnesses. If the clubs are shut down - and if cities do not offer an alternative - we risk an outbreak of unregulated and unregulatable criminal activity by patients, many of whom will be forced to hit the streets for marijuana. Our parks and neighborhoods will be blighted, our courts will be needlessly tied up and local law enforcement agencies will be overburdened. If it were up to me, community-based cooperatives working with local officials and supervised by the local health department would continue to act as medical marijuana distribution centers. But if Lungren and the federal government successfully shut them down, cities must seriously look into developing distribution plans that will implement the will of the voters. The other alternative flies in the face of human compassion and good sense.