MEDICAL MARIJUANA ACTIVIST SUES CITY OVER RAID

Medical marijuana activist Steven McWilliams, whose six-month federal prison
sentence was delayed pending appeal, has sued the city of San Diego and its
Police Department, alleging that local authorities should not have helped
federal drug agents uproot his pot garden last year.

In the case, filed Friday in San Diego County Superior Court, McWilliams and
his partner, Barbara MacKenzie, complain that their rights were violated
because what they were doing was legal under state law.

"They're not federal agents," McWilliams said of the police. "They're state
agents, and under state law what we did was lawful."

The lawsuit draws further attention to a glaring discrepancy between state
and federal laws. California voters in 1996 adopted a proposition that
allows chronic patients to smoke and grow marijuana, but the drug remains a
Schedule 1 narcotic under federal law.

McWilliams has been a high-profile medical marijuana activist for years,
distributing the drug to patients across San Diego County and providing
information about how to grow marijuana legally under state law.

Federal agents oversaw a multiagency task force that raided McWilliams'
Normal Heights home Sept. 24, seizing about 25 marijuana plants and other
materials they suspected might be involved in what they said was an unlawful
cultivation.

The agents made no arrests that day, but McWilliams was taken into custody
several weeks later on felony charges of illegally growing marijuana.

MacKenzie, who maintains that half of the plants were hers, was not charged.
McWilliams pleaded guilty to a single felony charge in February and on April
28 was sentenced to six months in federal custody.

The case is being appealed to a federal appellate court, and neither
McWilliams nor MacKenzie is allowed to smoke marijuana while the case
remains unresolved.

A hearing on that issue is scheduled next week in U.S. District Court.
McWilliams and MacKenzie, who both suffer from a variety of ailments, say
their health has deteriorated since they were ordered not to smoke
marijuana.

A spokeswoman for City Attorney Casey Gwinn said the office had not been
served a copy of the complaint and would have no comment on the case.

San Diego police Lt. Cesar Solis, who oversees narcotics and participated in
the medical marijuana task force debate, declined to comment specifically on
the case.

But Solis said the raid was conducted by a regional narcotics task force -
not San Diego police. He also said his organization routinely offers help to
other government agencies.

"We always assist other law enforcement agencies when we can," Solis said.

Local police in some other California cities where medical marijuana clubs
have been raided by federal authorities have refused to assist in
investigations or the execution of search warrants.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, although a claim filed earlier with
the city sought $50 million each for McWilliams and MacKenzie. Saying they
cannot afford an attorney, the couple filed the lawsuit themselves.

According to the suit, San Diego police provided aerial surveillance and
other assistance to federal drug agents investigating McWilliams. They gave
help, even though they knew McWilliams was complying with Proposition 215,
the state law permitting patients to use and grow marijuana, McWilliams
said.

Police officials also ignored the work of the city's Medical Marijuana Task
Force, a committee that spent two years developing guidelines on how the
city should implement the state law, he added.

"We're patients. We're known to be patients. We were working on the city
task force," McWilliams said. "What the police did is bad faith. They were
basically acting like double agents."

Since his arrest and subsequent plea, McWilliams said he has lost his
business, many of his friends and the ability to help other medical
marijuana patients find the drug or a doctor to recommend it.

In an unrelated case, Northern California marijuana activist Ed Rosenthal is
scheduled to be sentenced in federal court today on charges of illegal
cultivation. He faces 5 to 85 years in prison.

Jurors in that case complained publicly after the verdict that they were not
told Rosenthal was growing marijuana for sick people on behalf of the city
of Oakland.