for treatment

by Dan Levy

Chronicle Staff Writer

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

BAY AREA/CALIFORNIA Wednesday, November 10, 1993

A committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors yesterday joined the steadily growing ranks of California politicicans and medical experts who support the medicinal use of marijuana.

The board's Health and Public Safety Committee voted to ask state and federal officials to permit the cultivation and possession of medical marijuana. The panel also urged the government to remove marijuana from a list of drugs considered to be without medical value.

The supervisors' vote comes after a joint resolution by the Legislature in August that called for an end to federal prohibitions against the medicinal use of marijuana. Last year, the California Medical Association endorsed the therapeutic use of the weed.

Federal drug policy will have to be drastically altered if medical marijuana cultivation is to become legal.

The Drug Enforcement Administration now states that marijuana has no accepted medicinal use. However, the Food and Drug Administration has provided marijuana cigarets to a small number of glaucoma patients since 1978.

The DEA marijuana policy is under review by the Clinton Administration, a Department of Health and Human Serivces spokesman said yesterday.

Despite the legal prohibitions, some chemotherapy and AIDS patients grow their own marijuana or buy it off the street. Marijuana advocates have cited medical reports that say the herb can relieve nausea and pain.

Barbara Sweeney, a 39-year-old AIDS patient from Fairfax who suffers form wasting syndrome, told the supervisors that police confiscated two marijuana plants from ther home in September. She said smoking marijuana helps relieve her condition by bringing back her appetite.

"It makes me feel good," Sweeney said. Since police seized her plants, she said, she has bought marijuana from dealers at $60 per small bag. But with a $1,400 monthly income and bills to pay, Sweeney said, she has trouble affording the expense.

San Francisco voters passed Proposition P in 1991, which urged the legalization of hemp medication, including marijuana. Dennis Perone, a marijuana advocate and the author of the ballot measure, said, "Everybody agrees that cannabis is medicine. But if (patients) can't get it, what good is it?"

Supervisor Angela Alioto, author of the legislation, said her late husband smoked marijuana to ease the pain of his stomach cancer.