MARIJUANA: WHERE THERE'S SMOKE, THERE'S FIRE

By Richard Lacayo

If you know anybody who ever had cancer--or if you ever had it yourself--you know the ordeal that Jo Daly has gone through. When she started chemotherapy for colon cancer, the side effects included a "nuclear implosion" of nausea. Then came a burning pain under the nails of her fingers and toes. The good news is that she eventually found relief. The bad news is that it came from marijuana, which is not available by legal means. Worse news is that Daly is a former member of the San Francisco police commission, the body that regulates the police department. Even in easygoing San Francisco, felony drug possession is no joke, especially for her. Then again, neither is cancer. "I have a lot better things to do with my life," she says, "than breaking the law."

Enter on big, rough wheels the state of California, which helped pioneer the tricky practice of democracy through referendum. This year's most controversial example is Proposition 215. It would permit patients with cancer, aids, glaucoma, arthritis and other serious illnesses to grow, possess and use marijuana. It would also allow doctors to "prescribe" pot without fear of prosecution--or merely to recommend it, without committing themselves to a note pad. Though the change would not overrule federal or state laws that criminalize the recreational use of marijuana, Prop 215 would provide voter-approved legal backing for patients or doctors who were hauled into court. A poll shows that California voters favor it by about 2 to 1.

"This is an attempt to bring medicine to people who are needlessly suffering for lack of it," says Bill Zimmerman of Californians for Medical Rights, which sponsors the proposition. Many patients say pot eases the nausea of chemotherapy. It may also stimulate the appetite to counter the wasting effects of AIDS and reduce eye pressure caused by glaucoma. As a substitute the Food and Drug Administration has approved Marinol, a synthetic pill version of THC, marijuana's psychoactive ingredient. But patients often report it doesn't alleviate nausea. Daly tried it without success before turning to pot. "If it had worked for me, I wouldn't be doing this," she says.

The California legislature twice passed bills to bar prosecution of people who grow or use marijuana for legitimate medical reasons. But both times those were vetoed by Republican Governor Pete Wilson, who has also come out strongly against the ballot measure. Other opponents include law-enforcement agencies, drug-abuse programs, California's Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein and White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey. "This proposition is not about medicine," charges Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates, co-chairman of Citizens for a Drug-Free California, the campaign opposing Prop 215. "It's about the legalization of marijuana."

They complain that the referendum as written would permit almost anyone to buy marijuana. For one thing it would apply to patients suffering from "any" ailment for which marijuana provides relief, without specifying which complaints that would cover. As a picture of things to come, the opponents point to the Cannabis Buyers' Club in San Francisco, founded in 1991, which at one time claimed 12,000 members. Until Aug. 4, when state narcotics agents raided and closed down the club, it sold pot to anyone who was desperately ill. And maybe to other people. Police say that during a two-year investigation, undercover agents made purchases of several pounds at a time. They also say that teens and people with forged doctors' notes were making buys.

In the wake of that raid, agents came back to arrest Dennis Peron, the club's founder and a leader of support for the ballot measure. But his arrest was so controversial in San Francisco, where local police had already declined to shut down the club, that the indictment had to be obtained in nearby Alameda County. Events had already brought Doonesbury into the picture. For a week Zonker, the comic strip's aging soul-at-large, lamented the bust on Peron's club and went desperately in search of alternative sources for the patients it left stranded. Unfair, said Dan Lungren, California's politically ambitious attorney general, who was criticized by name in the strip for ordering the bust. He called on California newspapers to pull the offending strips. (None did.) "We simply have to tell people the basic facts about what this initiative does," says Lungren.

Opponents say they have raised only $30,000 to defeat the measure. The war chest in favor of Prop 215 tops $1 million, much of it from sympathetic tycoons. On the recommendation of Baba Ram Dass, the spiritual leader who works with aids patients, Laurance S. Rockefeller contributed $50,000. Global financier George Soros has contributed $350,000. With deep pockets like those behind it, the fight over medical marijuana could easily go national next.

--By Richard Lacayo. Reported by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles