PATIENTS SAY THEY'LL APPEAL TO COUNTY OVER MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAW

SAN DIEGO - The discussion is set to be held behind closed doors. But
at least a couple of local medical marijuana users hope to get a
chance Tuesday to try to talk county supervisors out of appealing
last week's court decision to throw out the county's controversial
bid to overturn California's medical marijuana law.

"I want to try to appeal to their humanity," Vista resident, business
owner, husband, father and spinal cord victim Craig McClain said
Friday. "Yes, definitely, I'll be there."

Rudy Reyes, a Cedar fire burn victim, said he also planned to come to
Tuesday's meeting to speak.

"I'm going in next week to say, 'Stop it, we don't need you guys to
continue with this, it's an abuse of our tax dollars,' " Reyes said.

County supervisors, calling the 1996, voter-approved "Compassionate
Use Act" a "bad law" that could promote drug abuse, voted in December
2005 to sue to overturn the law.

Last week, the county lost what could be the first round of an
extended legal battle that some say could eventually reach the U.S.
Supreme Court. The lawsuit has national importance because it is the
first time a county has sued to try to overturn any of the medical
marijuana laws approved by voters in 11 states.

Wednesday, Superior Court Judge William R. Nevitt rejected the
county's argument that the Compassionate Use Act - which allows
seriously ill people to use marijuana with a doctor's recommendation
to ease pain and suffering - should be pre-empted by federal law.

The federal Controlled Substances Act states that grown marijuana has
no medicinal value and is illegal, period - even though it says
synthetically created marijuana, known as Marinol, does have
medicinal value and can be prescribed for patients.

Nevitt, however, said the county's pre-emption argument failed to
recognize that state laws could take precedence over federal laws in
some cases. He also said the county failed to prove that California's
Compassionate Use act was legally "in conflict" with federal law
because federal drug agents could still arrest Californians.

On Tuesday, supervisors will meet for the first time since Nevitt's
ruling. They are scheduled to talk in closed session about where they
go now on the medical marijuana issue, and whether they should appeal.

Supervisors have talked little about the case since the lawsuit was
filed last year. But they have hinted all along that they would
probably appeal.

Last week, board Chairman Bill Horn did not return calls after
Nevitt's decision, and supervisors in general did not respond three
weeks earlier when Nevitt issued a tentative ruling initially
dismissing the county's suit.

John Sansone, the county's top lawyer, said last week that he felt
that Nevitt's ruling was extremely thorough. But he also said that
county lawyers still believed in their legal argument, and felt that
an appeal could be successful.

Sansone said that was what he would advise county board members
Tuesday in closed session, but that it was up to them to decide
whether to continue the challenge.

While McClain and Reyes said they planned to come to Tuesday's
meeting to ask the board to drop its challenge, a number of the
medical marijuana and legal advocacy groups that have criticized the
county's challenge were noncommittal last week.

Officials from Americans for Safe Access - a group that wants to get
the federal government to change its marijuana laws, and which has
appeared before supervisors a handful of times over the last year -
said they were not sure if they would attend, partly because the
county's discussion would be in closed session.

Officials from San Diego's chapter of the National Organization for
the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which was included in the county's
lawsuit against the state, could not be reached.

David Blair-Loy, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union,
said Friday that the group wasn't sure if it would send anyone to
Tuesday's meeting.

However, Blair-Loy said county supervisors were now "obligated" to
follow the state law - and create the medical marijuana
identification cards they refused to a year ago - because Judge
Nevitt had rejected the county's lawsuit and upheld the Compassionate Use Act.

The ACLU sued to "intervene" in the county's lawsuit on behalf of
medical marijuana patients like McClain and Reyes, and helped argue
against the county's case in court.

Blair-Loy said the California Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that
county's and cities had to follow state law until ---- and if ----
those laws were found invalid.

"Even if they appeal, they're obligated to comply," Blair-Loy said.

However, Tom Harron, the county's chief deputy county counsel, disagreed.

Harron said Nevitt's ruling was not final until the appeal process
ran its course.

Meanwhile, patients have said they're anxious for the county to drop
its challenge and to recognize "the will of the people" ---- the 56
percent of California's voters who approved the Compassionate Use Act
a decade ago.

Nearly a year ago, when the county was considering suing to overturn
the Compassionate Use Act, Horn likened the county's opposition to
the actions of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks.

"I think," Horn said then, "we should challenge this. I look forward
to the lawsuit when it happens. If we just celebrated Rosa Parks for
standing up against a bad law, I think we ought to stand against bad law."

Last week, Reyes rebuked Horn for that comment when he appeared
before the board to again demand that they stop.

"He was calling himself Rosa Parks," Reyes said Friday. "I told him
he was the man who wouldn't give up his seat."

Reyes was burned over 75 percent of his body in the 2003 Cedar fire
and uses a marijuana tincture as a cream to soothe the burn-exposed
nerves on his skin.

McClain, whose spine was crushed in a construction-related accident
several years ago, smokes marijuana to ease the chronic spasms the
accident created, and to reduce his chronic pain enough to sleep.

McClain uses a motorized scooter to get around.

"If it's closed session," McClain said of the supervisors'
discussion, "I can try to be there as they come walking in and ask
them to please reconsider their position."