People suffering from AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, and other serious or terminal illnesses sometimes turn to marijuana on the advice of their doctors when other treatments fail. DC's Initiative 57 would protect these patients, their doctors, and immediate caregivers from criminal prosecution in the use of marijuana in medical treatment. The tightly worded measure, proposed by the local AIDS activist group ACT UP, requires that medical marijuana be restricted to use under the supervision and care of a licensed physician.

Initiative 57 firmly establishes that medical decisions are best determined within the doctor-patient relationship, not politicians or government prosecutors. Volunteers have until December to gather approximately 16,700 signatures of DC registered voters to place Initiative 57 on the DC ballot.

Jailing sick and dying patients, in the name of public safety, is used by politicians trying to look tough on drugs. Under current law, the seriously ill who turn to marijuana for its possible therapeutic effects are subject to arrest, criminal prosecution, and incarceration.

Caregivers have no other option but to enter dangerous open air drug markets to purchase the marijuana that might provide some comfort to loved ones in their final days. Physicians who even discuss the possible benefits of marijuana in the medical treatment of their patients have been targeted by federal prosecutors.

Many AIDS patients have found relief with marijuana to ease severe nausea and vomiting, and to help counter the loss of appetite and weight loss of deadly AIDS wasting syndrome. Expensive new triple-combination therapies hold little promise for those AIDS sufferers who are unable to hold their pills down.

Cancer patients enduring the side effects of radiation and chemo-therapy sometimes find relief in marijuana. For over twenty years, marijuana has successfully treated some patients with glaucoma, one of the leading causes of blindness among Americans.

For those sick and dying patients who use marijuana to ease their suffering, marijuana is hardly a recreational drug. Withholding from these is patients a potentially life-saving therapy is criminal.

Initiative 57 simply provides legal protection to these patients, their physicians, and caregivers in the medical use of marijuana from prosecution of DC's Uniformed Controlled Substances Act. The DC initiative is much tighter than measures passed by voters in California and Arizona.

Under the provisions of Initiative 57, non-medical use of marijuana is explicitly prohibited. Use of medical marijuana, like other prescription medicines, cannot defend against any other crime, such as driving while intoxicated. DC activists have included a parental consent clause, Section 9 of Initiative 57, which prohibits the distribution of medical marijuana to any person under the age of 18 for the treatment of a minor's medical condition, without the informed, written consent of a parent or legal guardian.

The marijuana sold by drug dealers on the streets is sometimes laced with drugs or other contaminates. Initiative 57 would allow legal, non-profit corporations or cooperatives to ensure a safe supply of marijuana to patients, taking drug dealers out of the equation. Patients are limited under Initiative 57 in the quantities they are permitted to possess.

The integrity of the doctor-patient relationship is protected under Initiative 57 by allowing physicians to defend the medical-use of their patients before a judge in sealed testimony. Federal prosecutors are outflanked in their attempts to target physicians who discuss medical marijuana as an option for patients.

The local petition effort is drawing national attention from those who have shown little interest in the well being of the people of the District of Columbia. The DC campaign for Initiative 57 is turning into the first Republican primary of the 2000 presidential election. Billionaire publisher and former presidential candidate Malcolm 'Steve' Forbes Jr. has loudly launched a big money media campaign against Initiative 57, calling the AIDS activists sponsoring the measure "twisted drug predators." William Bennett, the failed drug czar under President George Bush, is directing opposition to Initiative 57 through his group Empower America. Representatives from the Family Research Council, headed by Reagan Administration domestic policy adviser Gary Bauer, tried to block Initiative 57 at the DC Board of Elections and Ethics, but they were unable to find a DC voter to oppose the initiative.

Reacting to pressure, Drug Czar General Barry McCaffery has weighed in, opposing the petition drive in a letter sent to local DC officials.

McCaffery's office admits that they have not yet reviewed the legislative text of Initiative 57.

Meanwhile, amid the posturing of presidential aspirants, open air drug markets and crack houses in DC continue to flourish. The Drug Detox Center at DC General Hospital is overflowing. Waiting lists for drug treatment slots grow as funding for these life-saving programs has been eliminated.

Drug king-pins continue to import crack cocaine for sale in our city, and the Lorton prison complex. Yet these pressing problems, so apparent to DC residents, have failed to grab the attention of political grandstanders, much like Nero fiddling while Rome burned.

By supporting DC Initiative 57, the people of the District of Columbia can free those suffering from AIDS, cancer, and other serious illnesses from the threat of prosecution and imprisonment if their doctor recommends relief in marijuana as a medication of last resort.

Those wishing to make a contribution, or volunteer should call ACT UP Washington at 202.547.9404.

(The writers are founders of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power in Washington, DC. Mr. Michael, who is HIV+, is the proposer of Initiative 57)

Note: An edited earlier version of this commentary appeared in The Washington Times on August 7, 1997.