RUNNION'S VIEW ON MONTPELIER

Montpelier -- Rep.  Sylvia Kennedy, R-Chelsea, tried to stop him.  The White House tried to stop him.  But Gov.  James Douglas turned down both and let the highly controversial medical marijuana bill become law this week.

Was it a tough decision? "Very difficult," said press secretary Jason Gibbs.  He paused.  "Very difficult," he said again.

Rep.  Kennedy notwithstanding, the toughest opposition Douglas faced was from President George W.  Bush's administration, which is of more than passing interest because Douglas is Bush's reelection campaign manager in Vermont.  John Walters, the so-called "drug czar" whose office of National Drug Control Policy is in the White House itself, tried twice to talk Douglas out of his decision.

The first time came last Wednesday, the day before the Legislature adjourned for the year.  Walters wanted the governor to veto the bill.  But the two of them didn't connect that day.  When Douglas returned Walters' telephone call from the White House, the czar had left.

Instead, Douglas issued a statement saying he would let the bill, which has passed the Democrat-dominated Senate originally and then, surprisingly, the Republican-dominated House, become law without his signature.

That was on Wednesday.  Late Thursday the governor and the czar actually talked.

"The conversation was frank," Gibbs said.  "The drug czar expressed his opinion and the governor listened politely."

Sylvia Kennedy, meanwhile, was steaming.  "I'm very, very disappointed," she said.  "I spoke to him about it.  I certainly did ask him to veto it.  I can't believe it."

Also opposing the bill were Reps.  Carroll Ketchum, R-Bethel, Philip Winters, R-Williamstown, and Stephen Webster, R-Randolph.  Supporting it were Patsy French, D-Randolph, Rosemary McLaughlin, D-Royalton, and Sen.  Mark MacDonald, D-Orange.  The bill passed the House on a 79-48 vote, which meant that a goodly number of Republicans supported it.

One obvious opinion around the Statehouse was that Douglas tried to have the best of all worlds-both ways.  By not vetoing the bill, he pleased those who believe marijuana does provide some comfort to seriously ill people.  As he said in a statement, "Over the last several months, the faces of Vermonters in real pain have advocated for the use of marijuana for symptom relief.  They are the husbands and wives who nursed dying spouses in their final days; they are sons and daughters who watched once-healthy parents wither and waste away.  I feel, as most Vermonters do, that we must do what we can to ease the pain of dying Vermonters."

But by not legally signing it, he can argue, as he did, that "I cannot actively support a measure that allows Vermonters to be subject to prosecution under federal law, increases the availability of a controlled substance, and sends a dangerous message to our children."

Now that's all well and good, but what Vermonters know, and President Bush knows, and Sylvia Kennedy knows, is that the Republican governor of Vermont "aided and abetted," to use a legal phrase, in making a very limited use of pot legal in this state.  Could he be charged with aiding and abetting? The governor looked very surprised.  "I hadn't thought of that," he said at a news conference.

Certainly it's not a good political move to make the drug czar unhappy, particularly John Walters, who was personally selected by President Bush and who has a reputation as a hardliner who believes in stiff prison sentences for hardcore druggies.  In the 1990s Walters has made a career out of drug enforcement, serving several years under the first drug "czar," William Bennett.  He is a vocal critic of the kind of medical marijuana use that Douglas is permitting in Vermont, saying, "What is really going on is that sick and dying people are being used as a political prop to legalize marijuana."

He made that pitch personally in Oregon last summer.  This winter, his deputy, Andrea Barthwell, came to Montpelier in an unsuccessful effort to get the Legislature to dump its plans for medical marijuana.  Pot can be legally cultivated and used for medicinal purposes in, besides Vermont and Oregon, Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada and Washington.

The Bush administration, unlike the governor, is single-minded on the subject of medical pot.  It has asked the Supreme Court to decide whether the government can withdraw a doctor's license to prescribe drugs if marijuana is in fact prescribed, as would be necessary in the bill passed by the Vermont House and Senate and allowed by the governor to become law.

The new Vermont law specifically exempts prescribing physicians from any state legal penalties including arrest, prosecution or disciplinary action.  But of course that leaves the drug czar free to go after any Vermont ( or Oregon ) doctor for violating federal law if the Bush administration gets clearance from the Supreme Court's eventual ruling and wants to make an example of someone somewhere.

As it is, the new law "recognizes" that it's still illegal in Vermont to sell marijuana and marijuana seeds even if medical use is permitted.  This means, the law says, that "patients will be forced to procure medical marijuana illegally until the federal government removes marijuana from its list of schedule I substances or allows states to permit the medical use of marijuana without violating federal law."

Nevertheless, the legislature said, "the purpose of this act is to ensure that physicians are not penalized for discussing marijuana as a treatment option with their patients, and that seriously ill people who engage in medical use of marijuana are not arrested or incarcerated for limited medical use of marijuana."

The law applies to some specific "debilitating medical conditions," including cancer, AIDS, or multiple sclerosis, which produce such severe symptoms as acute pain and/or nausea.

At the same time, it is necessary that "reasonable medical efforts have been made over a reasonable amount of time without success in relieving the symptoms." In other words, pot is a prescription of last resort.

The marijuana must be prescribed by a patient's regular doctor to either the patient or to a caregiver whose name, along with that of the patient, must be registered with the state police.  In fact, the state police, through the Department of Public Safety, are in charge of everything.  That came out in the House version of the bill.  The Senate version, which Douglas opposed as "all about cultivation and not compassion," gave enforcement authority to the Health Department.

Even so, not a lot of pot is involved-one mature marijuana plant, two immature plants and two ounces of usable marijuana.

The pot plants must be kept in a "secure indoor facility" which means a building or room equipped with locks that permit access only to the registered caregiver or registered patient.  The pot can only be "transported" to the patient in a locked container, and all this stuff must be given back to the state police within 72 hours of a patient's death.

All applications for a medical use card, which include the patient's name and photograph, must be submitted, along with a $100 fee, to the Department of Public Safety, which then will contact the patient's doctor to see if permission really has been granted.  It is a heavily bureaucratic procedure, which probably is the only way it could become law even without the governor 's signature.

His staff said Douglas didn't make up his mind until the very last minute.  What seems to have persuaded him was conversations he said he had with relatives of cancer victims, not the victims themselves.

That also appears to be the concern of one of the governor's supporters on this decision, the Catholic bishop of Vermont, Kenneth Angell.  He said in a message to Douglas, who is a loyal member of the ( Protestant ) United Church of Christ, that the real intent of the marijuana bill "is to offer relief and solace from chronic, severe suffering and pain." The Douglas staff quickly made the bishop's message public.

One of the governor's constant concerns was about the "message" that would be sent to young people.  He conceded that letting a bill become law but not signing it was sort of a mixed message to kids.  "But I want to explain it," he said.  "I want to explain that under very limited circumstances, the legislature said it's okay."

At a press conference a reporter wanted to know if the governor had ever "inhaled."

"No," Douglas said.  Firmly exhaling.