FOR MORE THAN 300 RHODE ISLANDERS, MARIJUANA PROVIDES LEGAL RELIEF

The old life of Kelly Powers began to slip away two years ago.

Her husband had bought her a new motorcycle for her 31st birthday,
but during the vision test for her license, Powers realized something
was wrong.

She'd been getting chronic headaches and was clumsy at times. She had
trouble holding a bottle for her infant daughter. Then her hands
couldn't seem to hold her baby.

It was multiple sclerosis. Within a year, the disease was claiming
enough of her body that she had to give up her daycare business and
retreat to her bed.

The doctors increased her medication to between 20 and 30 pills a
day, drugs that left the Warwick mother feeling like a zombie. She
stopped driving her son to elementary school. She couldn't talk on
the phone without losing her thoughts and drifting off. She rarely
left the house. She barely left her bedroom.

Her husband, Bob, an electrician, took over the housework. Her mother
and mother-in-law came over to help. Her sister came by at night to
put the couple's two young children to bed. "I felt like a bad mom. I
couldn't take care of my kids," Powers says. "Here I am, this is my
life, and everyone else is doing all the things I love."

Her husband, whom she'd met while singing karaoke at the old Venetian
Gardens in Oakland Beach, crooned the Guns N' Roses ballad "Patience"
to her on days when she struggled.

"My husband was crying because he couldn't help me," says Powers. "He
was afraid to touch me, because I was in so much pain. I wasn't me. I
was in so much pain, overmedicated, and I was withdrawing from everybody."

There was one woman who understood, a friend whom Powers met in a
multiple-sclerosis support group. Rhonda O'Donnell was also 31 when
she was diagnosed, and she had to give up her nursing career when the
disease blurred her vision and eventually left her hobbled. She'd
tell Powers, You can have a pity party, but you don't have to stay there.

O'Donnell, now 44, was a dynamo in a wheelchair, lobbying at the
State House for marijuana to be made legal for the chronically ill in
Rhode Island. Her son Tom Angell had brainstormed the idea with a
friend in his dorm room at the University of Rhode Island. Angell,
who was president of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy at the time,
had heard a speaker hosted by the group whose wife used marijuana to
relieve her pain. He thought about his mother.

Angell and his mother lobbied for the medical-marijuana legislation,
which became law in January 2006 on a one-year trial after the
General Assembly overrode Governor Carcieri's veto. The law became
permanent this summer.

Powers accompanied O'Donnell when the former nurse obtained her
medical marijuana card on May 1, 2006, the first day patients could
be approved for the program. But Powers hadn't been ready.

She'd seen some of her relatives struggle with drug addiction, and
she didn't want drugs in her life. Would using marijuana make her a
hypocrite? Her daughter was a toddler, but her son was just starting
elementary school and was old enough to know what was going on. How
could she explain to him that she was using an illegal drug? What
would his teachers think? Or members of her church?

THE NEW STATE LAW, called the Edward O. Hawkins and Thomas C. Slater
Medical Marijuana Act, allows patients with debilitating medical
conditions, such as cancer, HIV and multiple sclerosis, to possess up
to 12 marijuana plants and 2.5 ounces of marijuana.

An adult without any felony drug convictions may serve as a
"caregiver" for a patient, providing him or her with marijuana. A
caregiver can have up to five patients, and up to 24 plants and 5
ounces of usable marijuana if they have more than one patient. A
caregiver with one patient can have up to 12 plants and 2.5 ounces of
marijuana.

As of early last month, 302 patients and 316 caregivers were enrolled
in the program, according to the state Department of Health. A total
of 149 physicians in Rhode Island have referred patients to the
program. The Health Department has rejected 10 applicants as
caregivers because of felony drug convictions, and a caregiver and
patient have had their medical-marijuana identity cards revoked after
being arrested for having dozens more plants than allowed.

The new law left some gray areas that don't come up for patients
using other prescribed medications.

Marijuana is illegal under federal law. Rhode Island doesn't advise
patients how to get marijuana, how to grow it or how to use it. So
patients must grow it themselves, find a caregiver approved to grow
it, or buy it off the street from drug dealers. Growers say they
spend about a year cultivating the plants before they can be
harvested -- battling the usual gardener's woes of pests and plants
that can't be harvested.

In his opposition to medical marijuana, Carcieri, who twice saw his
vetoes of medical-marijuana legislation overridden, cited problems
with legally obtaining marijuana, and law-enforcement officials and
others called marijuana a "gateway drug." Supporters of the
legislation said marijuana provides immediate relief from pain
without the side effects caused by prescription pain medication.

Some Rhode Island patients say they worry that the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration may target them. Some worry about losing
their jobs or their federally subsidized housing. The DEA has raided
dozens of dispensaries in California, outlets that sell marijuana
products to people with marijuana identity cards, and warned
landlords in Los Angeles that they could face conviction and seizure
of their property for renting to the dispensaries. And in Oregon, the
agency subpoenaed the medical records of patients in the state's
medical-marijuana program for an investigation into marijuana growers.

But Anthony Pettigrew, agent for the New England field office of the
DEA, said that while marijuana possession is against federal law,
"the DEA never targets the sick and dying." The agency is more
interested in organized drug traffickers, Pettigrew said. "I've been
here for 22 years," he said, and "realistically, I've never seen
anyone go to federal jail for possessing a joint."

O'Donnell said she knew the legislation left some issues unresolved,
but she believed the state needed to start somewhere. "People say,
'Why don't you wait?'" O'Donnell said. "That's stupid to wait. We'd
be waiting 25 years."

The work of O'Donnell and other patients helped make Rhode Island the
11th state in the country to legalize marijuana for medical use. But
the very public battle overshadows the very private decisions of
hundreds of people using the drug to deal with the ravages of cancer,
HIV, multiple sclerosis and other debilitating diseases.

THERE WAS NO medical-marijuana law the day Bobby Ebert drove down to
Kennedy Plaza in Providence looking for someone to give him "the nod."

Shingles, an acute viral infection, wracked his body, escorted in by
complications from AIDS. He'd been diagnosed several years ago, and
his life of working as a roadie in the local rock 'n' roll scene had
ended. His body burned. He couldn't eat. When he did, he vomited. He
was taking dozens of pills, but they only dulled the pain, leaving
him angry and isolated in his small apartment in Warwick. He felt
like he was waiting to die.

Ebert had read online that smoking marijuana could ease the pain of
AIDS. He decided to try it on his own. It didn't take long to find a
dealer. And once he smoked, he says, it didn't take long for the
illegal drug to mute his pain.

His search for marijuana became routine. He was beaten and robbed
once. He saw the same thing happen to other people. He saw the police
driving around. Although he was risking arrest by buying marijuana,
he empathized with the officers. They had a job to do. But for him,
marijuana was returning him to life, he says.

As Ebert smoked the drug, his pain eased. His appetite returned. He
decided to wean himself off his pain medications -- Vicodin,
morphine, fentanyl -- and told his doctors why: he was smoking
marijuana. When the state program became law, his doctors referred him.

His family saw the changes in him. "He was miserable, constantly
angry at everyone and in a lot of pain," Ebert's 76-year-old mother,
Dolores Bishop, said last week. "I see a totally new boy. You know,
he's quite a gentleman now."

Ebert, 48, named his new Fender Stratocaster guitar "Heather" after
his former caseworker at AIDS Project Rhode Island, and he feels well
enough to play sometimes. The photos and artwork from his music days
are hung on the living room wall and scattered across a shelf where
his pain medication used to be. He can appreciate the wild turkeys
that feed on the cracked corn he scatters outside his door, and the
chipmunk that comes up to drink from a bowl of water he leaves outside.

Ebert now gets his marijuana from a caregiver, but he's afraid about
what the federal government could do to patients like him who live in
federally subsidized housing. In June 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court
ruled that people who use or grow marijuana for medical reasons can
still face federal charges even if state law allows it.

Ebert wrote this summer to Democratic U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse
and U.S. Rep. James Langevin, who both wrote back their support. "I
believe that patients seeking the palliative benefits of marijuana,
while abiding by legal regulations governing state-sponsored
medical-marijuana use, should not have to fear federal prosecution,"
Whitehouse said in a letter Ebert received last month.

Langevin had voted for an amendment that would have prohibited
federal money from being used to override state medical-marijuana
laws. Langevin's letter came this week, as Ebert was battling another
round of shingles. His illness scares him. "I know what I'm going to
die of," he says.

But while he has time, Ebert says he wants to convince other people
with HIV how medical marijuana can help them.

"Before this, I was angry. I hated life," Ebert said. "Now, I love
life, and I love to help people -- to show them what I've gone
through and say 'don't take the same roads.' There are a lot of
people who are afraid to come forward, so I'll speak for them."

DENIS DUBOIS WAS in his court-ordered rehab program when he got his
medical-marijuana identity card last year. That made for some
interesting conversations with his counselor.

"They didn't know what to do with me, because I'm there for substance
abuse, but what I'm abusing is my medication," Dubois said.

He'd been arrested twice by Woonsocket police for growing marijuana,
in 2000 and 2005, before the state legalized medical marijuana. He'd
even spent two weeks in jail. Dubois, 35, the lead singer for a
heavy-metal rock band, says he risked breaking the law because
marijuana was the only thing that relieved his back pain.

He was born with a hairline fracture in his lower spine, a problem
that went undetected until 1999, a month before his wedding. He was
getting ready for work at his parent's travel agency and collapsed in
pain. The doctors told him he had severe degenerative disc disease,
and Dubois says, "it was made clear to me that it will get worse as I
get older."

After surgeries and the insertion of titanium rods in his spine, the
pain became so debilitating that Dubois was ruled disabled in 2000,
he says. His prescription painkillers only dulled the stabbing pain
and left him so exhausted he could barely move. It was around that
time, he says, he began smoking marijuana for relief.

One hot afternoon, Dubois stood in a small bedroom of his caregiver's
large Colonial in Woonsocket and checked the homemade growing system
for his indoor marijuana garden. Small marijuana plants peeked up
over pots. An enclosed area had taller plants growing under
high-pressure sodium lights meant to simulate 18 hours of sunlight.

His caregiver, Emelie Archibald, 51, picked up Marijuana
Horticulture, a how-to book they've been using. Dubois is a friend of
the family, and when he needed a place to live, Archibald welcomed him in.

She calls him "the son I never had," and having seen his suffering,
she has become an advocate for medical marijuana. At a meeting for
the American Association of Retired Persons, one of the members asked
Archibald how she knew that Dubois wasn't just selling pot on the
street. Archibald said she shot back, "Would you sell your high-blood
pressure medication on the street?"

Dubois touched the leaves like a careful gardener and talked about
the methods he's read about. Other marijuana growers were giving him
advice on how to increase the health and potency of his plants.

Dubois says he wants to share seeds and cuttings and extra harvest
with other patients. "There are many patients who can't grow and
don't even have a caregiver," he says. "You need to know somebody who
can do this, who has the time and the money."

Medical marijuana, he says, has helped him regain his old life. The
band he sings with, Rat Poison, recently was booked for regular gigs
at a bar in Weymouth, Mass. He also credits marijuana with getting
him off "heavy-hitting" pain medications, such as Oxycodone.

He says his drug arrests made him feel like a low-life criminal. His
illnesses cost him his marriage, his home and his ability to work,
Dubois says. Now, marijuana is giving him a sense of purpose, of
being able to help others.

He cited the Declaration of Independence's reference to "Life,
Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

"To me, happiness is living without pain," Dubois says. "And if
marijuana can do that, then who the hell are they to say no?"

THE SUN WAS just a pale glimmer in the sky when Kelly Powers walked
gingerly up the attic stairs to her corner by the windows. Her
husband had left for work. The children were still sleeping. The
early morning was hers.

She picked up a glass jar of marijuana and loaded a small amount into
a glass pipe that she'd been given for her 33rd birthday. She flicked
a lighter and lit the bowl, inhaling. She held her breath for a few
beats and exhaled, sending small plumes of smoke into the attic air.

The attic, with its bare boards and exposed walls, has become her
sanctuary. She used to be afraid to come up here because it is dark
and empty and made her think about spirits in the old house. Now, she
comes up here in the early morning to smoke, write poetry and think.

She watched the birds land on the telephone wires. She sipped coffee
from an Oakland Raiders mug and picked up a red notebook. She
penciled drawings of an angel and the Virgin Mary, ideas for a
tattoo. "I relate to her. She was so strong to deal with what she had
to deal with," Powers said.

On July 7, 2006, with support from her team of doctors, Powers
decided to get her medical-marijuana identity card. Only three weeks
before, she had been writing poems about pain and loss:

I am scared of my future. How can I be a good wife?

Before getting her card, she'd tried marijuana during a camping trip
with her husband. Her muscles had relaxed and the pain had receded.
Bob Powers and O'Donnell urged her to join the program. After she
did, Powers says she was able to give up much of her dependence on
the painkillers that were leaving her groggy and exhausted. Even when
she became legal in the eyes of the state, Powers needed the
reassurance of her faith. She had talked with her pastor at the First
Lutheran Church in East Greenwich about having multiple sclerosis and
about her anger at God. Powers trusted her enough to tell her she was
smoking marijuana to ease the pain from the disease. Her pastor
understood and supported her, Powers says.

When Powers got up the courage to testify at the State House that the
law should be permanent, her church held a prayer circle for her.
After her testimony appeared on TV news, churchgoers thanked her for
her courage, she says. Some of them have cancer and they may end up
benefiting from the law, she says.

"I felt like maybe that's my purpose," Powers says. "I got involved
in this to help people. I found the strength through God to fight for
what I believe in."

The drug won't stop the onset of her disease. She's also been
diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a chronic illness with symptoms of
widespread musculoskeletal pain. Her memory is slipping, she says,
which frightens her. She takes hundreds of pictures of everyday
moments to help her remember. She plays memory games and trivia with
her son, who told her one day, "You're lucky I'm very smart, because
when you forget things, I can teach you."

On other days, she feels almost like her old self. Bob bought a
karaoke system, which they take with them on getaways organized by
the multiple sclerosis support group, and the family bought a new
motor home for camping.

During one get-away, Powers took a short walk and just sat for a
while, breathing in the quiet of the trees. "When you're so drugged
up on things, you can't think. And when you can't think about where
your life is going, you give up hope," she says. "I've got my hope back."

THE MIDSUMMER afternoon was heating up out at the pool behind Emelie
Archibald's house. The Rhode Island Patient Advocacy Coalition was
throwing a celebration for getting a permanent law passed. Archibald
had made marijuana brownies for the occasion. A sign next the
brownies said "Medical Marijuana Patients Only."

Kelly Powers took photographs of people at the party -- Bobby Ebert,
looking frail but happy, a smiling Rhonda O'Donnell, co-sponsor of
the law Rep. Thomas Slater, D-Providence, giving a speech, Denis
Dubois jamming on a guitar at the end of the pool. Powers noticed a
tattoo of a face in a cloud on Dubois' right bicep, and she told him
that it reminded her of a cloud she'd seen one morning while praying
for a sign that things would be OK. To her, the cloud looked like the
face of Jesus.

As one patient passed a joint to another, Dubois couldn't help
smiling -- he'd gone to jail for this, he recalled later. Archibald
called it "the first legal pot party in the state."

The woman who'd started it all had made her way up the stairs to the
backyard. O'Donnell will never be able to return to nursing, a job
she loved. But she says her efforts for medical marijuana will help
hundreds of people with multiple sclerosis, cancer, HIV and other
chronic debilitating diseases live with less pain -- and without the
lethargy and exhaustion caused by prescription medication.

She had been the first to apply for the medical-marijuana identity
card. She and her 76-year-old former mother-in-law went to a head
shop in Warwick to buy a glass pipe, where a clerk had to show
O'Donnell how to use it. Two puffs on a pipe were all it took to
relieve the burning pain in her limbs.

She wished her father could have found the same relief before he died.

Walter O'Leary had been diagnosed with melanoma when he was just a
few years older than she is now. He died in 1980 when he was 50, and
she was only 18. She learned recently that her father had tried
marijuana to help relieve his pain.

"My dad was the greatest guy, law-abiding, a father, and he had to
sneak this because what if he got arrested," O'Donnell said. "How
many people in these last 27 years have had to sneak this because
they could get arrested? How many have wanted to do it, but it was illegal?"

The law was too late for her beloved father. "All these people had to
worry about being illegal," she said. "And now, they don't."