Official to Keep Fighting New Marijuana Law

Pot as medicine may now be the law in California, but that doesn’t mean Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates has to like it.

Gates was a statewide leader in fighting the state’s new medical marijuana law, approved by voters as Proposition 215 on Nov. 5. Now he is trying to make it as tough as possible to use medical cannabis under the new state rules.

His chief ally is federal law.

Proposition 215 legalized marijuana for medical use in California. but growing or possessing marijuana remains illegal under U.S. statutes. So Gates plans to make sure anyone attempting to use Proposition 215 as a legal defense is handed over to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

In effect, local law officers such as Gates would be doing the police work for federal drug officials, who have the law on their side but lack the officers to make widespread arrests.

“We’re obviously going to provide the name of any doctor involved with marijuana to federal drug agents,” Gates said. “It will be local law enforcement’s responsibility.”

But it remains to be seen whether the federal government will take an active role in such a scenario.

Federal officials such as drug czar Barry McCaffrey have talked tough, but have yet to offer concrete plans to deal with new medical marijuana laws in California and Arizona. They say to stay tuned, that they will unwrap their plans as early as the end of the week.

“We’re still in a process of reviewing the initiatives and options that are out there,” said Gregory King, a spokesman for U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno. “The attorney general has made it clear that federal law still applies, and that prosecutorial decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis.”

Any guidance will come none too soon for California’s law officers and prosecutors, who have been puzzling over how to deal with the new medical marijuana law since election day.

Prosecutors and police chiefs from around the state are scheduled to meet for talks in Sacramento on Tuesday, but they don’t expect to make much headway until federal officials weigh in.

“We suggested this would be a legal fog after it passed, and that’s where we are,” said state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, an opponent of Proposition 215 who now finds himself in the legal position of defending the new law against anticipated constitutional challenges. “What we’re trying to see is if we can clear it up as much as possible.”

Lungren is not confident that the federal government will become an active player in policing small-scale violations of U.S. marijuana laws.

“When I hear things [from federal officials] like, ‘Well, we want to make sure this doesn’t happen in other states,’ it almost sounds like some people are saying, ‘There’s nothing we can do about California, let’s protect the rest of the country.’ ”

Federal drug officials normally do not become involved in marijuana cases unless a substantial amount--typically in the kilograms--is involved. But with the passage of Proposition 215, Lungren said, “they have a different scenario, a different reality now” to deal with.

He said it remains unclear whether a doctor’s federal license to dispense drugs might be put in jeopardy by recommending the use of marijuana to a patient.

Proposition 215 was written so doctors could simply make a recommendation--and not prescribe marijuana--thus circumventing federal rules. Lungren questioned whether a recommendation might be found “legally tantamount” to a prescription.

Jack Lewin, California Medical Assn. chief executive, said he remains hopeful that a constructive solution can be reached with federal officials to ease any threat to doctors.

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He estimates that 300 to 400 physicians in the state are interested in medical marijuana. Lewin has suggested to the federal government that a research project be initiated to provide marijuana for patients.

Lewin said such a study would free physicians and patients of any threat and perhaps settle the long dispute over marijuana’s medical effectiveness.

“We may just find out that medical marijuana isn’t everything that people think it will be,” Lewin said. “We certainly need to be unafraid to look at this objectively. The politicization of marijuana has almost made our nation afraid to find out if it has some therapeutic value.”

Backers of medical marijuana, meanwhile, doubt that the federal government has the officers or political willpower to step in and arrest physicians and sick people who use marijuana.

“Sheriff Gates is not going to succeed in getting federal officials to come after California doctors,” said Bill Zimmerman, who directed the pro-Proposition 215 campaign. “Politically it’s not viable. Nothing would unite organized medicine more than having a couple doctors arrested. You’d quickly have a couple hundred more doctors standing up and saying, ‘OK, arrest me too.’ No government could stand up to that.”

Zimmerman suggests that the new law’s biggest threat isn’t from law enforcement, but rather from one of Proposition 215’s most ardent supporters--Dennis Peron, the impassioned founder of the now-closed San Francisco Cannabis Buyer’s Club.

Peron, who was among those arrested by state drug agents in August when they raided the controversial emporium, has aggressively pushed for widespread distribution of medicinal marijuana in the weeks since the measure was approved.

He has worked to set up a new sort of buyer’s club, the San Francisco Caregiver Cultivation Co-op, sporting a written pledge to provide “the highest standards of cultivation,” low prices, lawyers “should you be arrested,” and ready availability of “plants, clones and seeds.”

Peron also suggested in a recent interview that marijuana is a superb stress reliever and thus “all marijuana use is medical.”

Zimmerman said such talk damages the credibility of the medical marijuana movement and could trigger a backlash.

“We have much more to fear from Peron right now than we do the police,” Zimmerman said. “While he’s arguing for the broadest interpretation of the law possible, we feel it should be kept narrow.”

Other medical marijuana advocates are likewise testing the limits of the law.

In Berkeley, a pro-marijuana group began marketing medicinal marijuana on the Internet after Proposition 215 passed. Gates said an unidentified man walked into a United Parcel Service office in Orange County and tried to ship 10 pounds of marijuana to a friend alleging medical need.

Zimmerman is concerned about how such excesses will play on the national stage.

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Although dozens of state legislatures have passed bills supporting medical marijuana, many of those are nonbinding resolutions that have not been tested in the courts.

Zimmerman’s group wants to sponsor initiatives in about a dozen states in 1998. He doesn’t want the effort to stumble in California before it even gets out of the gate.

Peron was out of the state and unavailable for comment, but an ally said his actions spring from a compassionate belief that marijuana can provide relief from a broad range of ailments, among them the nausea caused by chemotherapy, AIDS wasting syndrome and increases in eye pressure prompted by glaucoma.

“I don’t think Dennis is making any statements without forethought,” said Jeffrey Reed, outreach coordinator for Californians for Compassionate Use and a registered nurse who has AIDS. “There are so many benefits from medical marijuana that have yet to be discovered. We shouldn’t put on restrictions early on.”

Such differences between the two camps in California’s medical marijuana movement are nothing new.

Peron was one of the authors of the measure, but when efforts to put it on the ballot flagged, he was pushed aside. Wealthy benefactors hired Zimmerman and created their own group to boost the measure Peron wrote.

Now that it has been approved, Zimmerman and others want to plug loopholes in the new law. His group is already working with state legislators to draft a bill clarifying ambiguities left by Proposition 215.

Changes they hope to make include ensuring that a minor could only have marijuana recommended for an ailment with parental permission.

Zimmerman also wants the law to more clearly specify that a recommendation for marijuana may be made only by a licensed physician, and that doctors should be required to closely monitor patients using the drug.

One issue Zimmerman doesn’t want tinkered with is the measure’s lack of limits on cultivation and consumption. “Personal use is ambiguous,” he said, “but so are patients’ needs.”