MARIJUANA 2000: A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF POT PROHIBITION

Number of Americans arrested since 1970 on marijuana-related charges: over
13 million

Estimated U.S. deaths in year 2000 attributed to

TOBACCO: 400,000

ALCOHOL: 110,000

PRESCRIPTION DRUGS: 100,000

SUICIDE: 30,000

MURDER: 15,000

OVER-THE-COUNTER PAINKILLERS: 7,600

MARIJUANA: 0

"One of the problems that the marijuana-reform movement consistently faces
is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever
wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks
down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick
and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in
bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer-madness allegation of the
prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm
to far more people than marijuana ever could."

Richard Cowan, former head of NORML, now editor of www.marijuananews.com

JANUARY 18 Atlanta: Louis E. Covar Jr., 51, a quadriplegic paralyzed from
the neck down in a diving accident on July 4, 1967, who says he uses
marijuana to relieve the pain from muscle spasms in his neck, is sentenced
to seven years in prison after being accused of selling marijuana out of
his home. Judge J. Carlisle Overstreet sent Covar to prison after
investigators found about 1.25 ounces of marijuana in his home. "We feel
strongly he was selling out of his house," Richmond County DA Danny Craig
said. Covar denied the charges, insisting the small amount was for his
personal medicinal use. According to the Department of Corrections, the
special care Covar will need will cost $258.33 a day -- or more than
$660,000 if he serves his full seven years.

A typical prisoner costs taxpayers $47.63 per day.

FEBRUARY 9 Arizona: Deborah Lynn Quinn, 39, born with no arms or legs, is
sentenced to one year in an Arizona prison for marijuana possession, thus
violating her probation on a previous drug offense -- the attempted sale of
4 grams of marijuana to a police informant for $20. Quinn will require
around-the-clock care for feeding, bathing and hygiene.

Terry L. Stewart, Arizona Corrections Director, expressed his frustration:
"I simply cannot understand how a judge can sentence a disabled woman to
prison who presents absolutely no escape risk, no physical danger to the
public, and who will be an extremely difficult and expensive person to care
for at $345 per day, without exploring any alternative sentence measures
such as intensive probation."

FEBRUARY 15 The United States' prison and jail population surpasses 2
million people. Prisons are one of the fastest-growing expenses of
government, costing about $100,000 to build a single prison cell and about
$24,000 per year for each prisoner. Some 1.3 million U.S. inmates are
currently serving time for "nonviolent offenses." One-quarter of the
world's prisoners are now incarcerated in the "land of the free."

FEBRUARY 23 Honolulu: The Hawai'i Medical Association comes out formally
against the pending state medical-marijuana initiative. Heidi Singh,
director of legislative and government affairs for the Hawai'i Medical
Association, said more studies should be done on medical marijuana, and
that "physicians cannot in good faith recommend a drug therapy without
clinical evidence to back it up."

FEBRUARY 28 Madrid: The chemical in marijuana that produces a "high" shows
promise as a weapon against deadly brain tumors, say Spanish scientists. In
the study on rats a research team from Complutense University and Autonoma
University in Madrid found that one of marijuana's active ingredients, THC,
killed tumor cells in advanced cases of glioma, a quick-killing cancer for
which there is currently no effective treatment.

The scientists found that THC pumped into the tumors cleared the cancer in
more than a third of the test rats. The drug also prolonged the life of
another third by up to 40 days but was ineffective in the rest. The cancer
did not come back in any of the survivors.

Researc hers are not sure why, but the Spanish team says THC caused a
buildup of a fat molecule called ceramide, which provoked a die-off of the
cancer cells.

MARCH 2 United Kingdom: Marijuana-like compounds ease tremors in mice with
a condition similar to multiple sclerosis, researchers say in a study
published in the British journal Nature that appears to corroborate
patients who say pot helps them deal with the disease. "This lends credence
to the anecdotal reports that some people with MS have said that cannabis
can help control these distressing symptoms," said Lorna Layward, one of
the study's authors. Layward heads the research arm of the Multiple
Sclerosis Society of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

MARCH 13 Mondovi, Wisconsin: Mondovi police conduct a 3:30 a.m. raid at the
home of medical-marijuana activist Jackie Rickert, seize a small amount of
marijuana and search her home until 10 a.m. Rickert is 49, wheelchair-bound
and weighs 90 pounds.

Rickert suffers from Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and reflexive-s ympathetic
dystrophy, bone and muscle illnesses that keep her in constant pain and
often unable to eat. She smokes marijuana to ease her pain and restore her
appetite.

Rickert had just missed being accepted into the federal government's
Investigative New Drug program, which distributes a tin of 300 pre-rolled
marijuana cigarettes to eight legally protected American citizens each month.

Rickert's daughter, Tammy, claims the police raid has left her mother a
wreck. "She's tiny, frail," Tammy Rickert said. "She's not outto hurt anybody.

She's trying to maintain some semblance of a quality of life. The
marijuana, which the government pretty much told her she could use, helps a
little.

This whole thing is unbelievable."

MARCH 16 New York City: An unarmed black security guard, Patrick Dorismond,
waiting for a cab with his friend Kevin Kaiser, is shot dead by undercover
New York City police officers conducting a marijuana "buy-and-bust." Two
plainclothes detectives approached Dorismond asking if he would sell them
"some weed." Dorismond rebuffed the men, a scuffle ensued and a third
officer, Anthony Vasquez, rushed in, pulled out his revolver and fired a
single bullet into Dorismond's chest.

No drugs or other contraband were found on Dorismond's body. The shooting
was the third time in 13 months plainclothes New York City police officers
have shot and killed an unarmed black man. Under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani,
marijuana arrests in the city have risen from 720 in 1992, to 59,945 in the
first 11 months of 2000.

APRIL 1 Toronto: Canada's premier national newspaper, The National Post,
editorializes in favor of legalizing marijuana: "Marijuana legalization has
long been the subject of academic debate.

The time has come to turn conjecture into law. Canada's police, judges and
prosecutors have better things to do with their time than track down those
who produce and consume a substance no more dangerous than alcohol and tobacco.

We should begin the decriminalization of marijuana by immediately reducing
the punishments thatc an be imposed for its possession to modest fines --
and start thinking about how to regulate its use."

APRIL 12 Santa Cruz, California: The Santa Cruz City Council unanimously
approves an ordinance making the city the first in the nation to legalize
the production and sale of medical marijuana without a doctor's
prescription, as long asit is sold at cost or given away.

APRIL 25 Honolulu: Despite the formal opposition of the Hawai'i Diocese of
the Catholic Church, the Hawai'i State Senate passes medical-marijuana
legislation, joining California, Oregon, Washington, Maine, Alaska, Arizona
and the District of Columbia in shielding medical marijuana patients from
criminal prosecution.

MAY 11 Charleston, West Virginia: The West Virginia Supreme Court, voting
4-1, denies a "medical necessity" defense to Donna Jean Poling, a
multiple-sclerosis patient in the terminal stages of her illness, who was
arrested for growing marijuana in her home. Poling claimed that marijuana
kept her symptom-free for three years preceding her 1998 arrest, after
which her condition worsened dramatically.

JUNE 9 New York City: Human Rights Watch releases a study finding that
Illinois is the worst state for racial disparity among jailed drug offenders.

Illinois' black men are 57 times more likely than white men to be sent to
prison on drug charges, and blacks comprise 90 percent of all prison
admissions in Illinois for drug charges -- the highest percentage in the
country. Nationwide, federal studies show that white drug users outnumber
black drug users 5 to 1, blacks make up about 62 percent of prisoners
incarcerated on drug charges in the United States, compared with 36 percent
of whites.

JUNE 14 Los Angeles: Bestselling author, cancer and AIDS patient and
high-profile, medical-marijuana activist Peter McWilliams is found dead in
his home. McWilliams, barred by a federal court order from using marijuana
to counteract the extreme nausea caused by his AIDS drugs, is found dead on
his bathroom floor, having choked to death on his own vomit.

His federal prosecutors say they were "saddened by his death."

McWilliams bestselling books included How to Heal Depression, Getting Over
the Loss of a Love, Life 101 and Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The
Absurdity of Consensual Crimes In Our Free Country.

JULY 31 Ontario, Canada: Ontario's top court rules unanimously (3-0) that
Canada's law making marijuana possession a crime is unconstitutional,
because it does not take into account the needs of Canadian
medical-marijuana patients.

The judges allow the current law to remain in effect for another 12 months
to permit Parliament to rewrite it. However, if the Canadian government
fails to set up a medical-marijuana distribution program by July 31, 2001,
all marijuana laws in Canada will be struck down. The decision comes in the
case of Terry Parker, an epileptic who had been denied a federal
medical-marijuana exemption. Parker has been hospitalized over 100 times
for injuries sustained during seizures.

AUGUST 16 Los Angeles: The American Medical Marijuana Association reports
that medical-marijuana patient, grower and author of How to Grow Medical
Marijuana, Todd McCormick, confined to federal prison while appealing his
drug-possession conviction, was sent to solitary confinement. According to
his mother, Ann McCormick, Todd went to the prison's medical office and
requested the synthetic form of marijuana, Marinol, produced by Unimed
Pharmaceuticals, that he had been taking prior to his incarceration. One
day after Todd requested the legal medicine, the Feds ordered that he be
drug-tested. When the results came back positive for marijuana, Todd was
placed in solitary confinement. "The pain in his neck and back has been
unbearable lately," said McCormick's mother. "Todd has a spinal fusion--
the top five vertebrae were fused when he was 2 years old. A tumor had
completely eaten the second vertebrae and the old fusion is now literally
carving grooves in the base of his skull, prompting severe headaches as
well. His left hip stopped growing when he was 9, a result of radiation
treatments for childhood cancer.

He has severe scoliosis, nerve damage in his upper back, shoulders and neck
and severe muscle spasms in his lower back. He has received no medical
treatment since January," said Mrs. McCormick.

AUGUST 20 Seattle: An estimated crowd of 100,000 people gather at Myrtle
Edwards Park for Hempfest 2000, calling for the legalization of marijuana
for personal and medical use, as well as legalization of hemp for
environmentally sustainable industrial uses. The event is the largest of
its kind in the world, with no arrests reported.

SEPTEMBER 8 Santa Fe, New Mexico: Green Party presidential candidate Ralph
Nader joins New Mexico's Republican Governor Gary Johnson in criticizing
the nation's war on drugs, calling for the legalization of marijuana and
reform of what Nader calls "self-defeating and antiquated" drug laws.
"Addiction, no matter what kind of addiction, should not be criminalized,"
Nader says at a news conference with Johnson in Santa Fe. "It's got to be
subjected to health programs and caring programs, because they work."
Rehabilitating drug addicts gives a far better payoff than "criminalizing
and militarizing the situation," he said. "Study after study has shown
that, and yet somehow it doesn't get through to federal policy."

OCTOBER 16 Washington, D.C.: U.S. Drug "Czar" Barry McCaffrey announces his
resignation, effective January 6, 2001.

OCTOBER 16 Washington, D.C.: The FBI releases its 1999 Uniform Crime
Report. There were a record total of 704,812 U.S. marijuana arrests in
1999, or one every 45 seconds. Of those arrests, 620,541 (88 percent) were
for simple marijuana possession while 84,271 (12 percent) were for
sales/cultivation. During the Clinton administration, there were 4,175,357
marijuana arrests, a record for any U.S. presidency.

NOVEMBER 7 Election Day: Voters across the United States pass sweeping
drug-law reform initiatives. In California, despite opposition from
Governor Gray Davis, Attorney General Bill Lockyer, Senator Dianne
Feinstein, statewide police associations and prison guard unions, citizens
vote 61-39 to pass Proposition 36, diverting nonviolent drug offenders into
treatment rather than prison for first and second offenses.

Proponents claim the move will save the state $150 million annually and
will cancel the need for a new state prison.

In Mendocino County, CA, voters approve Measure G by a 58-42 margin,
decriminalizing personal use and cultivation of up to 25 marijuana plants.
Nevadans vote 65-35 to pass Question 9 allowing qualifying patients to
possess marijuana for medicinal purposes.

In response, a self-appointed task force of state healthcare officials, the
Nevada Medical Marijuana Initiative Work Group, moves to limit use of the
drug to research studies, adding months if not years to approval time. Said
Louis Ling, general counsel for the Nevada State Board of Pharmacy and part
of the work group, "No matter what system gets passed, it's going to be a
good long time before medical marijuana is available." By a 53-47 margin,
Colorado voters pass Amendment 20, allowing qualifying patients to possess
up to 2 ounces of marijuana and grow up to six plants.

Tom Strickland, U.S. attorney for Colorado, in a statement released on the
afternoon of Nov. 7, says that his office will continue to "aggressively
enforce federal drug laws, including the prohibition of marijuana,
regardless of the passage of this ballot initiative." Utahns, by a margin
of 69-31, pass Initiative B, denying government agencies the right to seize
property from individuals before they are convicted of a crime.

Salt Lake County District Attorney Dave Yocom responds, "Obviously we're
going to rethink this and decide whether or not to work to get (the
initiative) repealed during the next legislative session." Oregonians pass
a similar property-seizure reform initiative, Measure 3 --the Oregon
Property Protection Act -- by a margin of 66-34. Measure 3 diverts drug
forfeiture proceeds from police treasuries into drug treatment programs.

NOVEMBER 27 Washington, D.C.: In the case U.S. vs. Oakland Cannabis Buyers'
Cooperative, 00-151, the U.S. Supreme Court takes on the issue of whether
"medical necessity" is an acceptable exception to the federal law that
makes marijuana distribution a crime.

A decision is expected by June 2001.

DECEMBER 6 Brussels, Belgium: The Liberal Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt
and the Brussels coalition of Liberals, Socialists and Greens vote to end
marijuana prohibition. As of January 1, 2001, Belgium, joining its neighbor
The Netherlands in embracing tolerance, will "exempt from punishment
possession, consumption and trade of up to five grams hashish or
marijuana." Belgium is the host country of the European Union.

DECEMBER 6 New York City: In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine
released today, President Bill Clinton was asked if he thought "people
should go to jail for using or even selling small amounts of marijuana?"
Clinton replied, "I think that most small amounts of marijuana have been
decriminalized in some places, and should be." Clinton added, "We really
need a reexamination of our entire policy on imprisonment. a lot of
people are in prison because they have drug problems or alcohol problems
and too many of them are getting out -- particularly out of state systems
- -- without treatment, without education, without skills, without serious
efforts at job placement."