San Francisco Chronicle - Monday, October 28, 2002
Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer

San Francisco's Proposition S would direct city officials to explore cultivating and dispensing the plant in light of the federal government's crusade against medical-cannabis clubs.

"If the federal government continues to assault, intimidate and close our community-based cannabis clubs, leaving many thousands of our citizens unable to access medicine, I believe that we must have an alternative distribution network prepared to serve their needs," said San Francisco Supervisor Mark Leno, the measure's chief sponsor.

The proposal comes after legislators and voters in cities and states scattered across the nation have challenged federal authorities by passing both meaningful and symbolic laws favoring medical marijuana. Leno said it's only a matter of time before Congress and federal officials buckle to the pressure.

"I believe we are coming to the end of a period of prohibition," Leno said.

San Francisco's ballot proposal is a policy directive that would prompt such city officials as the mayor, supervisors, district attorney, city attorney and public health chief to look at everything from where the pot could be grown and to whom it would be distributed to the liability and legal implications.

The next step could be the enactment of legislation.

If San Francisco actually got into the pot business, it's a good bet the federal government would move to shut it down.

"We won't speculate on events that have not occurred," said Richard Meyer, spokesman for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration's regional office in San Francisco. "But we are committed to enforcing the laws approved by the United States Congress, and marijuana is an illegal substance under federal law."

The DEA has stepped up its anti-marijuana enforce in recent years, conducting raids in San Francisco, Oakland, Petaluma, Santa Cruz and other cities across California against people who say they are growing and distributing marijuana for medicinal purposes. Anti-drug crusaders question whether the medical cannabis issue is being used by supporters for the larger goal of decriminalizing marijuana.

The debate over medicinal marijuana intensified after California voters approved in 1996 Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act, which gave state sanction to the use of pot for medical use. Since then, eight other states have adopted similar laws.

San Francisco's Republican Party opposes Proposition S.

"Fundamentally it's bad public policy," said local GOP chair Mike DeNunzio. Cities, he said, should concentrate on things like schools and transportation, not an agricultural program that challenges federal law. In addition, he said, the program could end up costing taxpayers a bundle just for the security that would be needed to protect the crop.

But with no details on what the program would entail, associated costs are speculative at this point. No other city in the country has tried to farm pot.

San Francisco wouldn't be the only city to defy federal authorities. Last month, city officials in Santa Cruz allowed advocates to distribute cannabis products in the courtyard of City Hall after federal agents busted a local pot club. Earlier this month, the San Jose police chief pulled three of his officers from a DEA task force that conducted the Santa Cruz raid.

Last year, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a symbolic measure declaring San Francisco a sanctuary for the use, cultivation and distribution of medical marijuana. Nine medical cannabis clubs, serving an estimated 2,000 patients a day, operate in San Francisco with tacit approval by City Hall.

The city's Department of Health also has distributed about 3,700 official identification cards to medical marijuana users and their caregivers. The idea is that they can flash the cards if the cops catch them with a small amount of the illegal drug, and they won't be busted.

San Francisco's public health chief, Dr. Mitch Katz, supports Proposition S.

He prescribes marijuana to some patients in his AIDS practice at San Francisco General Hospital, saying it has benefits that other drugs can't achieve. "I have several patients who by using medicinal marijuana have experienced less nausea, have gained weight, have experienced less pain and have experienced an improved sense of well-being," Katz said. "For these patients, there is no other drug that works as well for these indications. Medicinal cannabis has no side effects; other medicines do."

Dr. Eric Voth, who chairs the Institute on Global Drug Policy, a conservative think tank, said San Francisco is heading down the wrong track if Proposition S is adopted.

"When we put people in the position of approving drugs by popular vote, it's scary," said Voth, whose practice is in Topeka, Kan.

He noted that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has yet to sign off on the drug. "Would they (San Francisco officials) hand out cardiac medicine without going through rigorous testing? Would they hand out hypertension medicine without going through rigorous testing? They're trying to make an end run around the FDA. Where's the product control? . . . Who's going to bear the legal responsibility if something goes wrong?"

Katz said there's a catch-22. The federal government has prohibited testing of marijuana except on a very limited basis.

The American Medical Association has taken a neutral position on medical marijuana.

Wayne Justmann is one of San Francisco's leading advocates of medicinal marijuana. He runs the San Francisco Patients Cooperative, a pot club that serves more than 350 people a day on Divisadero Street.

He has been living with HIV for 15 years and suffers from neuropathy, brought on by his HIV infection and the medicine he takes to treat it. Pain, he said, shoots through his hands and legs, and into his toes. He smokes around 4 grams of pot a day. "It eases my pain," he said. "There's no doubt. The other drugs I was prescribed just didn't do it."

E-mail Rachel Gordon at rgordon@sfchronicle.com.

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