POT SHOTS

The Bush administration has attacked medical marijuana on several fronts,
but its latest effort to go after doctors has got the outspoken director of
a Santa Cruz-based medical marijuana referral service stepping out of the
shadows and onto the warpath. He offers an inside look at how medical
marijuana works and why the feds have taken on a war they can't win.

The Marimed Referral Service on the east side of Santa Cruz exudes the edgy
yet laid-back atmosphere you'd expect from an operation that occupies
"Suite M for Marijuana," as Marimed director William Malphrus jokes. This
is where Malphrus and his associates match doctors willing to do physical
evaluations and make medical marijuana recommendations with patients who
believe they qualify for the benefits of the Proposition 215-approved green
stuff.

Recently, Malphrus, who favors loud shirts and speaks with a distinct
Georgian drawl, has kept a low profile for fear his organization would be
targeted for working in an area that is legal under California's medical
marijuana law, but increasingly under fire from the feds.

But that reticence burned off like so much summer fog when the Bush
administration announced this month that it wants the Supreme Court's
permission to strip prescription licenses from doctors who recommend
medical marijuana--an activity U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson called
"no different from recommending heroin or LSD."

That's the kind of cartoonishly right-wing comment that gets medical
marijuana activists fired up. Malphrus scoffs, saying marijuana is "God
given, unlike heroin and LSD--not to mention cocaine and crack--which are
man-made."

But to him, that kind of government rhetoric is nothing new. Nor are the
threats against doctors who recommend marijuana for medicinal purposes.

When Prop. 215 passed in 1996, the Clinton administration announced that
doctors who recommended medical marijuana faced losing their federal
licenses to prescribe medicine. But in January 1997, doctors and patients
statewide filed a class action suit against the feds, alleging the federal
threat violated their free speech rights under the First Amendment.

In September of 2000, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that doctors
can recommend marijuana to patients who may benefit from it without fear
that the feds will strip them of their licenses to prescribe medicine, or
otherwise impose sanctions. In his decision, Judge Alsup expanded and made
permanent a previously granted temporary injunction that prevented the feds
from revoking a doctor's license to prescribe medicine.

But now, the feds are arguing that Alsup's decision prevents the DEA from
protecting the public, and licenses doctors to treat patients with illegal
drugs. Their request to strip doctors of their licenses would gut medical
marijuana laws and hurt doctor-patient relationships--and according to
seasoned medical marijuana activists, doesn't stand a snowball's chance in
hell.

"The Supreme Court has so many requests, it's doubtful they'd revisit the
issue of a doctor's right to prescribe medical marijuana, and they
certainly cannot do anything that will impede a doctor's income," says
Malphrus.

Either way, the threat hasn't put a damper on Malphrus' referral service.

"We have doctors lined up from Santa Barbara to San Francisco, and since
October 2002, we've signed up almost 1,600 new patients," he says.

That translates to about 200 new matches a month and includes, according to
Malphrus, "veterans who fought for our country and were wounded, cops from
other counties and a big-time Catholic priest."

Business may be good, but Malphrus insists he ain't getting rich on these
transactions.

"You're allowed to recoup your investment and cover your overheads," he
says, pointing to his modest office where a couple of assistants answer
phones and help do background checks. "But if you're doing it legitimately,
you're not getting rich."

Malphrus also insists that unlike some medical marijuana clubs "where
people can walk in and say they have a back problem," people who get
referrals through Marimed have to have been seeing a doctor for their
condition and have a complete paper trail about their medical situation.

"If not," says Malphrus, "going to one of our doctors is as far as they can
get."

Won't Back Down

Malphrus describes his operation as a "screening service" in which patients
get matched with the best doctor to suit their needs.

"If a person comes in and they haven't seen a doctor in ages, or they have
no insurance, but think of themselves as sick and obviously have a medical
condition, we'll do a background check, and try and find any medical
records, before we send them to a doctor," he says. "All patients have to
be documented, so Marimed can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they
have a problem. We have to verify that they are documented, or there has to
be one helluva good reason if they are not, such as a visible or verifiable
problem. We do a good and thorough screening process."

Malphrus, who formerly operated two cannabis buyers clubs in Santa Cruz
County, says there's a big difference between a referral service like
Marimed and a medical marijuana dispensary.

"Once you get a recommendation, you can take it and join any medical
marijuana dispensary in the state," he says, "but dispensaries have to
operate in the shadows between the laws, and that's the part that's scary
from the federal point of view."

Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected medical
marijuana buyers' clubs, a decision that outlawed medical marijuana
exceptions under federal law, but did not touch on medical marijuana laws
that have passed in California and eight other states. A bill to provide
federal protection to medical marijuana users in those states failed once
again in the House last Wednesday--though it did receive 152 supporting
votes, 58 more than it got when it was voted down in 1998.

Still, as current medical marijuana laws stand, the party providing the
medication runs all the risks, Malphrus explains.

"Prop. 215 allows two individuals to exchange some of the product without
it being illegal. Beyond that, it gets dicey," he says, noting that under
215, a person with a valid doctor's recommendation can have up to 6 pounds
of "product," and grow a certain number of plants--though even that figure
varies by region. He points to Alameda County, which once allowed 144
plants, but then slashed the legal number to 72. Those are the kind of
inconsistencies that explain why Malphrus prefers to be on the referral end
of things.

So, what could the feds do to him?

"Kiss my ass," he says.

It's a joke, of course, but there's a somber side to his fightin' words,
too. His brash attitude, he says, is partially fueled by the fact that
after having open heart surgery in 1999, he was told he had only five years
to live.

"After that," he says, "I did lots of self-evaluation. I wanted to make the
world a better place, so I got involved in this industry, in which I
consider myself an expert, an activity that meshes with my personal
religious, medical and political beliefs. I have no bad thoughts about
medical marijuana, except maybe the cost."

He's quite aware, he says, that he's putting himself at risk by putting his
own face on the medical marijuana issue.

"I'm putting myself at risk, yes, but it would be awfully expensive and an
awful waste of taxpayers' money for the feds to go after me for this. I'm
just a sick individual who's found a way to get involved," he says. "I
protect my doctors 100 percent, and for the past few years, I've just been
riding on Valerie and Michael Corral's achievements. But they're having
their trials and tribulations, and now the political climate warrants my
stepping up to the plate, taking the bull by the horns and becoming more
public. Unlike Clinton, I definitely inhaled. I intend to keep on sending
people to doctors, where they can get legal, legitimate recommendations,
until they send me to jail."

The Rights Behind the Fight

Valerie Corral hopes they won't be able to. The co-founder of the Santa
Cruz-based Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) implies that
Malphrus may be onto something in his legal arguments for the rights of
physicians when she points outs that five attempts have been made by the
feds to overturn doctors' rights to recommend--and each has failed.

"I have faith in the wisdom of the courts," says Corral.

That said, she upbraids the Bush administration for "continuing to speak
out about being compassionate conservatives, when none of its actions
substantiate those claims."

The government, says Corral, should be providing safe access to medicine
and creating a more compassionate society.

"Imposing fear on physicians--and the nation--and making people go on the
streets to find their medicine is none of those," she says.

For his part, Malphrus acknowledges that he and everyone else involved with
medical marijuana owe a lot to WAMM and the Corrals, "who are compassionate
and responsible warriors for this cause."

In other places, he says, things aren't always so rosy.

"In Oakland, if you visit a cannabis buyer's club, you have to worry about
getting robbed or hit up on the way out," he says. "Whereas Santa Cruz is
the best city and county in the nation for medical marijuana, because the
local government is on the citizen's side and does everything it can to
help implement Prop. 215."

Malphrus sees the feds' recent attacks--the raid on WAMM's property last
fall, as well as the prosecution of San Francisco medicinal marijuana
grower Ed Rosenthal--as little more than delay tactics along the way to
medical marijuana's inevitable decriminalization. He says it's not just
government, but big-business interests that have stymied the growing
cultural acceptance of medical marijuana.

"Pharmaceutical companies don't want the feds to legalize a medication that
a person can acquire and grow for themselves. They want you dependent on
their products, because of their profit factor," he says. "And insurance
companies don't want it legalized, because then they'd have to cover the
cost of the medical marijuana prescriptions."

Still, Malphrus sees things changing all around him. Canada's recent
decision to legalize marijuana for terminally and chronically ill patients
makes it the first country to do so.

"The Canadian government was smart enough to realize that there's huge
income to be made from taxing medical marijuana, while being able to
provide relief for its citizens' ills. So, it got over the embarrassment of
negative attitudes towards medical marijuana and onto healing its citizens.
That's what we should be doing," he says.

It's only a matter of time, Malphrus believes, before the feds get around
to realizing that.

"It would be pretty much a tragedy if they don't. Because if you're using
it for medicinal purposes, you're exercising your right to choose whatever
medication works for you. Whether it's proven scientific fact, or a
psychological aspect, really doesn't matter. If you feel it helps, that's
your personal choice," he says, describing his position as "Jeffersonian."

He Fought the Law

For Malphrus, who is diabetic and says he has had severe stomach problems
since childhood, it's a political crusade that is also extremely personal.

"No pharmaceuticals have been able to settle my stomach. Marijuana has,"
says Malphrus, who grew up in Georgia, a state where possession of an ounce
earns a mandatory 25 years.

In California, where he's lived since 1991, his pot crusading has led to
run-ins with local law enforcement, beginning with a 1995 arrest in
Monterey County for growing the crazy lettuce.

"The judge understood I wasn't growing to sell, so he gave me three years
unsupervised probation," he says.

Six years later, a Santa Cruz Superior Court judge ordered that almost one
pound of the green stuff be returned to Malphrus, thus ending a
nine-month-long court case which began when an Airborne Express employee
opened a package sent to him by his wife (under the pretenses of an invalid
return address) and found 1 ounce of pot, a couple grams of hash and a
bottle of hash oil. Sheriffs deputies then searched the couple's residence,
where they found and confiscated a pound of bud--despite evidence, says
Malphrus, that he had a valid physician's recommendation.

"Technically, I did not commit a crime, since I was on board an airplane
when the hash oil was intercepted," he says. But he pled guilty to
possession of hash oil and paid a $100 fine rather than see his wife
charged with trafficking. To this day, however, he feels he was targeted by
the then-DA because of his involvement with the now-defunct Santa Cruz
Cannabis Pharmaceuticals, of which he was a director.

These days, Malphrus is particularly pissed at President Bush, who as
governor of Texas and a presidential candidate claimed to support states'
rights, but is now supporting the crackdown on growers, dispensaries and
medical marijuana clubs across the nation.

"Richard Nixon was responsible for scheduling marijuana as a Schedule One
drug, and basically we're still going through the prohibition period on
this drug," he says.

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)--which
says the United States currently spends $1.2 billion annually incarcerating
drug offenders, and another $6-to-$9 billion tracking them down and
arresting them--also believes the U.S. may be moving closer to the end of
what it calls "marijuana prohibition," especially in light of the Canadian
decision, which it should be noted is still extremely controversial even there.

Until that time, though, Malphrus believes that the feds can still give
anyone in the medical marijuana industry grief, if they so choose.

"They'll do whatever they can to shut you down, but hopefully they'll
eventually recognize that U.S. voters want this to change," he says. "The
old politicians are dying, and the new ones grew up in era of having free
sex and smoking pot--and they didn't lose their brain cells doing it. They
know the government propaganda is bullshit. So, state by state, the
marijuana laws are slowly changing. And they're gonna have to, because
that's what people want."