2 MOMS WHO NEED MARIJUANA AWAIT SUPREME COURT RULING

Forced to Challenge Feds to Keep Their Healing Remedy

Angel Raich and Diane Monson never imagined themselves as the
standard-bearers for the medical marijuana movement. They just wanted to
ease their pain.

But the two middle-aged Northern California mothers say they were forced to
challenge federal authority over the drug's use in a case the U.S. Supreme
Court will hear in the coming months.

They insist marijuana is the only thing that keeps their otherwise
debilitating illnesses at bay despite government claims that it is an
illegal and addictive drug that doctors have no business prescribing or
even recommending.

Raich, 38, of Oakland, is a mother of two teenagers who began using pot for
her ill health nearly a decade ago. She became an activist and met her
attorney -- and husband-to-be -- at a medical marijuana event.

"I really feel like I have been blessed by cannabis," said Raich, who has a
15-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son. "Cannabis is my family's miracle.
Without cannabis, I would have wasted away."

Monson, 47, who lives quietly in a home she and her husband built on 160
acres in rural Butte County near Oroville, joined the cause two years ago
after federal agents raided the property and confiscated six pot plants she
used to cope with back pain.

Shortly after the raid, the two women met each other in their lawyers'
office and decided to sue the federal government, seeking protection for
medical use of marijuana under California's Proposition 215; approved by
the state's voters in 1996, it allows doctors to recommend marijuana to
their patients.

Pot Helped Paralysis

Raich's health problems began as a teenager in Stockton when she got
curvature of the spine. In 1995, the right side of her body became
partially paralyzed after an allergic reaction to birth control pills.

For nearly four years, Raich could not get out of a wheelchair unassisted.
She lost her accounting job in Sacramento County as a result of her illness
and moved back to Stockton to be closer to family.

Raich has since been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, uterine
fibroid tumors and other disorders, said her doctor, Berkeley physician
Frank Lucido.

As Raich's condition deteriorated, a nurse at a local hospital suggested
she try marijuana. Raich was initially offended, but in desperation she
asked a relative to find her some pot "off the street."

It helped, stimulating her appetite and restoring feeling to the right side
of her body. About 18 months later, she got out of her wheelchair and
walked again.

She threw herself into the medical marijuana movement, attending rallies,
lobbying legislators, working with local police and speaking frequently to
reporters.

She gave up her birth name -- which she asked be kept confidential --
adopting "Angel" after fellow patients started calling her that.

Raich met her "third and last" husband -- Robert Raich, who is her attorney
and a well-known advocate for medical marijuana -- four years ago as a
result of her activism. After two years of communicating with each other
via telephone and e-mail, Angel said she had walked up to Raich at a
medical marijuana-related event and placed her hand on his shoulder.

"Once we touched, that was it. It was really quite magical," she said. They
were married in 2002.

They live in Oakland's Redwood Heights neighborhood, in a home with
sweeping bay views. Depictions of angels are scattered around the living room.

Raich says she found a community where she felt comfortable at the Oakland
Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative and by talking with other patients online.

She consumes more than eight pounds of marijuana a year -- smoking it,
vaporizing it, eating it and mixing it with massage oils. Two caregivers
grow it for her free of charge.

"The average person doesn't really understand what it's like to be really,
really ill," she said. "The medical cannabis movement is more of a family
than my own family."

Raich's activism took her to a rally this summer outside the California
Highway Patrol office in Oakland to protest the confiscation of thousands
of cannabis plants from a warehouse that she claims was storing medical
marijuana.

"This is my medicine, and they want to take it away," Raich yelled angrily,
waving a plastic bag holding two ounces of pot.

Restored Her Appetite

Monson suffers from what her doctor calls "degenerative disease of the
spine," and she has been plagued by frequent and severe back spasms since
1989. Prescription medications made her groggy or nauseated if they worked
at all, she said.

Monson started using marijuana daily after a doctor recommended it in 1999,
although she readily admits that she and her late husband, Michael Pierce,
"were always light recreational" pot smokers.

Beyond easing her chronic pain, the drug restored the appetite she lost to
depression when she learned in March that her husband was terminally ill.
He died in June.

Monson, an accountant who previously owned a landscaping company with her
husband, typically smokes her first bowl of pot about midday -- sometimes
earlier if she's not feeling well.

"You know, wake and bake," she said with a laugh.

The laughter fades as she recalls how she was standing in her bathrobe in
the kitchen making granola when she saw trucks and a helicopter racing down
her driveway one morning in August 2002.

Sheriff's deputies and Drug Enforcement Administration agents jumped from
their vehicles, some with guns drawn. They had come to investigate the six
marijuana plants they'd spotted in her backyard while flying over her house
earlier.

Deputies concluded that Monson's plants were allowed under state law and
were preparing to leave when DEA agents said Monson's plants had to be
destroyed.

"That's when the phone calls started," Monson said.

For three hours, the deputies conferred with Butte County District Attorney
Mike Ramsey, who told them to protect Monson's plants -- at gunpoint if
necessary. Ramsey, who felt bound by the voters' will, phoned the U.S.
attorney's office in Sacramento, which called Washington. The verdict:
Overrule the district attorney.

The deputies backed off, and one of the federal agents chopped down the
plants as a tearful Monson read aloud the text of Prop. 215. Monson was not
arrested or charged with a crime.

About two months later, she received a call from San Francisco attorney
David Michael, who told her he had a lawsuit ready for the perfect
plaintiff - - her. She came to the Bay Area to meet the attorneys and Angel
Raich, and they decided to pursue litigation.

Monson has been content to leave the case in the hands of lawyers, and she
rarely attends demonstrations or public events or socializes with Raich.
Her extra time goes to teaching literacy at the local library and
volunteering at a nursing home.

"I have more notoriety than I'd care to have," said Monson.

High Court to Hear Case

In December, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco
issued a preliminary injunction finding that the women's case appeared
convincing and ordered federal authorities not to arrest or prosecute them
for using locally grown pot obtained free of charge for medical purposes.

The Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed late
last month to hear the case.

Monson and Raich are not sure what they will do if they lose the case.

"I'm either going to have to find another way to get that medication, or
I'm going to have to do without it," Monson said. "That is a very scary
concept, because I've had no luck with other therapies."

Raich says she won't be a lawbreaker and would most likely leave the United
States.

"They'll run me out of my own country," Raich said. "I really don't feel
that's fair, because I feel like I've been a good citizen."