POT BUST PROTEST AT POLICE STATION

Activists Say 4,000 Plants in Warehouse Were for Medical Use

Demonstrators planted small marijuana plants and scattered hemp seeds
outside a California Highway Patrol office in Oakland on Tuesday to
protest the recent arrests of four people for growing pot, supposedly
for medical use.

The 30 protesters, some openly smoking marijuana from a pipe and
several in wheelchairs, denounced the CHP for calling in the federal
Drug Enforcement Administration this month after a state officer
discovered 4,000 marijuana plants growing in a West Oakland warehouse.

Medical marijuana advocates say the herb was destined for sick people,
while state officers said they had no indication the warehouse
operation was anything more than a criminal enterprise.

As soon as the demonstration concluded, two CHP officers wearing
elastic gloves went to the landscaped area where the seven green
plants were poking out of the ground and dug them up, placing them
into a brown evidence bag.

Capt. Jim Leonard said he had not realized what the protesters were
doing because he had not posted an officer to monitor the
demonstration, which took place on a city sidewalk.

"If I had known what they were doing, I might have done something
different," he said.

Among those demonstrating were Angel McClary Raich, who is currently
being sued by the federal Justice Department over medical marijuana
use in a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court; and Ed Rosenthal,
a marijuana advocate found guilty by a San Francisco federal jury last
year of growing pot for a cooperative that supplied patients.
Prosecutors are appealing Rosenthal's conviction, while the government
is appealing the trial judge's decision not to sentence him to prison.

Don Duncan, who works at a Berkeley pot dispensary, said the plants
and seeds were used to pose a question: Where are patients supposed to
grow marijuana under Proposition 215, the initiative approved by
California voters in 1996 that legalized marijuana for medical use
under state law?

Duncan contends the CHP should have left the warehouse operation alone
because it was intended to supply marijuana to dispensaries that
provide the plant to people with doctors' recommendations to use the
drug.

"The state of California should not be victimizing patients," he
said.

He said the state agency also should have consulted with local
officials instead of notifying a federal law enforcement agency.

CHP Sgt. Wayne Ziese said his agency had first notified the Oakland
Police Department, which declined to take the case, and then turned it
over to the DEA, which has the expertise to process such a large crime
scene.

The warehouse operation did not fall into the category of a typical
medical marijuana bust, he said, in which a person with a relatively
small amount of marijuana might claim medical authorization.

"Individuals there (at the warehouse) were not pulling out their
medical authorization cards to show to the officers," Ziese said.
"They were running away."