In the meantime, in Oregon, a state which once did legalize medical use of marijuana ... and then repealed the law ... and which was the first state to decriminalize possession of less than 1 oz. of pot ... and then repeal it ... petitions to put several marijuana initiatives on the November ballot are in circulation.

It remains to be seen how many of these actually make sense, how many will obtain the required number of signatures, and how those that make the ballot are perceived by the voters.

The results may well depend on whether or not the public can see past attempts to equate marijuana with heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, opium or any of the other drugs du jour that addict and destroy lives, and which justifiably terrify parents whose children are increasingly given access to them.

The truth about marijuana is not easily accepted in the face of a steady barrage of warnings that it is merely the first step to harder drugs, an assertion that has more 'potholes' in it than Eugene's rain-ravaged streets.

The issue at stake here should not be that legalizing the medical use of marijuana is merely an attempt to open the floodgates for legal use of 'recreational' drugs, although that is certainly something which may have to be faced at some point. 

What Oregon voters may be asked to decide in November is whether physicians have the right to prescribe a drug which is far less mood-altering than many drugs they already widely prescribe ... and, unlike those drugs, is not addictive for the majority of users.  This is not what the public wants to hear.

They would rather hear that there are less alarming methods to combat the nausea produced by chemotherapy and the pain of cancer patients, to promote the appetites of AIDS patients suffering wasting syndrome, to arrest the rise of optical nerve pressure in glaucoma patients, or relieve the symptoms of multiple sclerosis and paralysis.

It is true that there are alternatives, alternatives that often do not work as well as marijuana.  Even Marinol, a drug containing the active ingredient of marijuana, doesn't seem to work as well as smoking it, and costs considerably more.

The sufferers of these conditions, and many doctors who treat them, would rather hear that they will not be criminalized, as an elderly Eugene couple recently were, for growing pot to relieve medical conditions. 

The Oregon Medical Marijuana Act would allow, with a doctor's written approval, the use of home-grown pot for this purpose only.    It would be one step toward a saner view of a drug that can offer relief that nothing else can provide as effectively.

The next step would be for the government to back off and allow the voice of the people to stand.