JUDGE IN MEDICAL MARIJUANA CASE SCOLDS STATE AGENCY

A District Court judge in Fort Collins issued a strongly-worded
rebuke today to the Colorado Department of Public Health and
Environment for not complying with a court order related to a
medical marijuana case.

Chief Judge James Hiatt threatened the agency with a contempt
citation and told an attorney from the Colorado Attorney General's
office to turn over information on medical marijuana patients for
whom James and Lisa Masters of Fort Collins acted as primary caregivers.

"Your client (individuals from the Colorado Department of Public
Health and Environment) needs to get appropriate appellate relief,
comply with the order or, option three, someone is going to wind up
in jail," Hiatt told Anne Holton, an attorney with the attorney
general's office, during a scheduled hearing today.

The Masters, who are medical marijuana patients, were arrested and
charged with cultivation and distribution of marijuana last summer.
Those charges were dropped in June after it was ruled the search of
their home was illegal.

Now the couple has been fighting to get back the equipment and
plants seized from their home more than a year ago. However, that
process was delayed until late next month because the depart-ment
still refuses to produce the records.

As part of the process, Hiatt required prosecutors to subpoena the
records from the health de-partment, which administers the medical
marijuana program. The agency appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court
but that was denied.

Amendment 20, passed in November 2000 to establish Colorado's
medical marijuana program, re-quires the department to maintain a
confidential database of medical marijuana patients. Holton said
that privacy should be balanced against the prosecution's need
for the records. The prosecution's need for the records does not
rise to the level to justify breaching the confidentiality of the
medical marijuana program, she argued.

"The process we are in now is not a criminal proceeding," Holton
said. "The DA's interest is not in prosecuting but in retaining
seized evidence."

Hiatt disagreed and at one point called the delay unfair to the
parties involved. Hiatt gave the department until 5 p.m. Monday to
turn over the records. If the records have not been submitted by
that time, Hiatt said he would issue a contempt citation.

"You can't just say 'we still disagree with the order,' " he said.

Rob Corry, one of the attorneys representing the Masters, said after
the hearing he was gratified that Hiatt and prosecutor Michael
Pierson seem to be taking the matter so seriously but that there is
some frustration in the delay.

"This is medicine that people need," he said.

Corry argued in court that because the charges against his clients
were dropped that they were en-titled to get back their property,
including the seized marijuana. In an order issued in June, Hiatt
said a hearing on the matter was necessary because the medical
marijuana component of the case was never addressed by the
resolution in the case.

Prosecutors have objected to the property being returned, citing
that neither James nor Lisa Masters were registered medical
marijuana patients at the time of the seizure nor was there any
docu-mentation that they were serving as caregivers for other
medical marijuana patients.