RALLY CALLS FOR END TO POT "PROHIBITION"

When Cindy Roemer started using marijuana five years ago to treat her
chronic arthritis pain, she was plagued with guilt. "I felt like I
was breaking the law," she said.

The former school-bus driver from Longview still worries about the
stigma medical marijuana carries, even though it's been legal in
Washington to use the drug with a doctor's approval since voters
passed a 1998 initiative.

Roemer, who uses a wheelchair and a cane because of the pain in one
leg, was among more than 100 people who marched from Capitol Hill to
Westlake Park in downtown Seattle on Saturday in support of
liberalizing marijuana laws. She thinks it should be legal for anyone to use.

In Washington, doctors can authorize patients with certain conditions
to have a 60-day supply of marijuana for medicinal purposes. After
much confusion over just how much marijuana constitutes a 60-day
supply, the state Legislature passed a bill last year directing the
state Department of Health to set the amount. That determination is
expected this summer.

Marijuana use is still illegal under federal law.

Saturday's event coincides with similar Marijuana Liberation Day
events in as many as 200 other cities nationwide, according to
organizers. After the march, the group rallied at Westlake Park in
front of a banner that read, "Munchies saves lives."

Seattle City Councilman Nick Licata was among the speakers.

Seattle's march was organized largely by people who use medical
marijuana, and it comes just two days after the death of musician
Timothy Garon, 56, who said he had been denied a liver transplant
because he used marijuana to ease the nausea and abdominal pain of hepatitis C.

Organizer Vivian McPeak said the goal of the march was to "end the
prohibition" on medical marijuana, eliminate jail sentences for
nonviolent marijuana-possession charges and legalize the production
of industrial hemp.

Marijuana activism is associated with hippies and the 1960s
counterculture, McPeak said, but "the reality is, people from all
walks of life support this law; people from all walks of life know
people who need medicinal marijuana; people from all walks of life
know someone who has been needlessly incarcerated" for marijuana use.

At Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill, an eclectic mix gathered -
middle-aged people with long hair and tie-dyed shirts, families with
children, groups of young people drinking Red Bull and smoking. The
smell of marijuana smoke wafted from a stand of trees.

On the outskirts of the rally, Margaret Denny, 57, rode in a
wheelchair that her son had decorated with jail bars. She is fighting
a drug-possession charge after an arrest at her Maple Valley home
last October. She said the police found more pot in her possession
than she's allowed with her medical authorization. They took her to
jail in an ambulance.

She said a 1979 car accident left her suffering from various, painful
problems with her hip and foot.

"I just think, what a sad waste of the taxpayers' money, putting the
sick and the dying in jail or trying to arrest them," she said.