DE LA FUENTE'S MARIJUANA LAW WILL CAUSE HARDSHIP, LOSS OF LIVES

THIS is in regard to the recent City Council meeting in which Ignacio De
La Fuente quite possibly cost hundreds of Oakland's cannabis-using
medical patients their lives.

In 1998, the council passed the most scientifically based limit for
plants for people who need to grow their own medical cannabis. The
numbers used were arrived at after many meetings of a working group of
various experts in the cannabis field -- law enforcement, doctors,
patients and members of the public. It is based on the federal medical
program in which eight patients are given a half-pound a month or more
of government-grown cannabis.

De La Fuente pushed through a compromise reducing the numbers of plants
a sick patient can grow by half, down to 72 total. This is a total
outrage. As a person who needs medical cannabis and grows her own, I can
tell you this is in no way a sufficient amount.

I have an average need of three pounds a year. The 72 plants is about a
third of my total needed, if you include crop losses and incompetency. I
am an experienced grower and 72 plants isn't enough for me.

The vast majority of Oakland's patients have not anywhere near the
expertise I do and would find the 72-plant limit even more of a burden.
The information used by De La Fuente to arrive at the new 72-plant
number was incorrect and politically motivated. Sure, 72 plants sounds
like a lot to those who've never grown it, but since medical plants are
grown small, coming in at about a quarter ounce each (not a half ounce
like claimed), by doing a simple math calculation one can see that this
is in no way sufficient.

I sat through the entire council meeting. The cannabis issue was delayed
until the end so that all the other citizens of the city who attended
would have finished their business and not be present to witness our
being railroaded.

De la Fuente clearly doesn't like us dying patients, as he cut all of
our speakers off at the exact time limit, even though he allowed every
other speaker for every other issue -- even ones not as urgent as ours
- -- to speak as long as they liked, and even encouraged them.

One group of activists, he allowed to cheer and clap as long as they
wanted and congratulated them on their presence, courage and hard work.
To us, he was curt, rude, refused to let us have our say and pushed
through an untenable compromise.

As president of the council, he owes every citizen of Oakland the same
courtesy. It seems to me, a medical necessity patient with AIDS, that De
La Fuente just wants me to go away and die quietly in a corner
somewhere. Not gonna happen, Ignacio.

The president of the council has a hidden agenda. He does not care about
the dying AIDS and cancer patients of Oakland, the mothers and fathers
with arthritis, the sisters and brothers with MS and CP, the
grandfathers and grandmothers with glaucoma.

Two incidents were laid before the City Council in the Public Health and
Safety Committee meeting preceding this City Council meeting to
illustrate the fact that the 12,000 members of the Oakland Cannabis
Buyer's Cooperative were flouting the law. Neither of the incidents
dealt with bona fide cannabis patients, and one really occurred in
Berkeley.

These were the most flimsy of excuses. The reality is that Ignacio just
doesn't like cannabis. He kept insisting that he thought he had a
compromise on this issue. He compromised with two directors of local
cannabis organizations, but not with me or the other patients. I don't
agree with this number, and neither does anyone else it directly
affects.

There should be another reading of the new guidelines before they are
voted on by the council. Please, if you live in Oakland, and know anyone
who has been helped by cannabis, call your Council person (especially
Ignacio) and tell him or her that the greater community doesn't have a
problem with cannabis or the current growing guidelines and that
reducing the numbers of plants a patient can grow would be cruel and
inhumane.

AS a grower, as a person who would not be alive and writing this letter
right now if it weren't for cannabis, I am telling you, the uninformed
public, that 72 plants isn't enough. Please support the 12,000 members
of the Oakland Cannabis Buyer's Cooperative by supporting the current
Oakland guideline of 144 plants.

There is absolutely no public health issue. They just want you to think
there is, so that sick and dying people have to start to worry for the
first time in years where their medicine is going to come from.