MEDICAL POT FARM PUTS NEIGHBORS IN MIDDLE OF DRUG WAR

Marijuana: Residents Feel Relief, Guilt after Feds Raid Operation in Sonoma
County.

SEBASTOPOL, Calif. -- First came the snarling guard dogs, then the
barbed-wire fence and 24-hour security patrols, all of it smack in the
middle of a leafy neighborhood on the outskirts of this wine country
town.

Residents along Martin Lane reached a collective conclusion this
summer: Robert Schmidt's medicinal pot farm was a problem. An armed
camp, they called it. A magnet for thieves. A danger to neighborhood
kids.

Their worries seemed to abate when carbine-toting federal drug agents
rumbled in Sept. 12, arrested Schmidt and uprooted 3,454 marijuana
plants reputedly intended as medicine. But concern lingers on this
dead-end gravel lane in the heart of get-along Sonoma County.

Schmidt's neighbors remain perplexed that their pleas for help went
unheeded for so long. But they're also troubled that Schmidt, 52,
could face a long prison sentence--10 years to life--for what they
consider a desire to help the sick. The punishment, they say, doesn't
fit what should have been simply a residential zoning violation.

"Here in California," concluded Jayne Garrison, a neighbor, "we're
living in a legal twilight zone when it comes to medical marijuana."

The latest clash on Martin Lane is only one of many messy conflicts to
erupt since 1996 when California voters approved Proposition 215, the
landmark initiative that made medical use of marijuana legal under
state law but set up a testy conflict with the federal government's
unwavering prohibitions on pot.

The fight has centered on the more than 50 nonprofit cannabis
dispensaries that have sprung up in California since the initiative
passed. Though it allows patients or caregivers with a physician's
recommendation to grow pot for their own use, dispensaries were
fashioned as sources for shut-ins or those too ill to cultivate the
plant they had permission to use. Growers like Schmidt supplied such
dispensaries.

Over the last year, the rift between the state and the U.S. has only
widened. In May 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that federal law
doesn't allow a medical exception for marijuana use. Although eight
other states allow medical use of pot, California has remained the top
target. Federal drug officials say growers in the Golden State are
simply more visible--thus easier to arrest--and apt to bring raids to
the attention of the news media.

As more growers have been busted, advocates for the medical use of pot
have increasingly voiced outrage, in particular over a Sept. 5 raid
that shut down a collective in Santa Cruz; activists countered by
defiantly distributing marijuana in front of City Hall last week.

The conflict flared again Monday, as police arrested about 30
demonstrators blocking a federal courthouse in Sacramento to protest
the conviction of the leader of a Chico dispensary of marijuana for
medical use. Federal drug agents also are targeting small operations
once considered not worth the bother. On Tuesday, drug enforcement
agents uprooted a San Diego activist's 26-plant pot garden.

"It's a very controversial issue, this so-called medical marijuana,"
said Richard Meyer, a Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman in San
Francisco. "But we get lots of calls from communities thanking us."

Residents on Sebastopol's Martin Lane didn't know what to make of
Schmidt when he swept into the neighborhood last spring, renting a
farmhouse atop six acres at the end of the road. Schmidt, now being
held in a Bay Area jail, could not be reached for comment, and his
attorney, Alexandra McClure, declined to discuss the case.

With his beard and gray ponytail, Schmidt seemed a cross between
Willie Nelson and Col. Sanders, neighbors said. He rode horses,
fancied western garb and sometimes clomped around in a black duster.
Schmidt was friendly, they say, with a dash of bravado. Among
advocates for medicinal use of marijuana, Schmidt styled himself the
"cannabis cowboy." He told folks on the lane his crop would consist of
sunflowers and corn. But he also referred them to a Web site for
"Genesis 1:29," the marijuana operation Schmidt established shortly
after California became the first of nine states in the U.S. to
legalize medical use of marijuana.

For its first years, Genesis sat shoehorned in a Petaluma subdivision,
20 miles down the freeway. But in 1999, armed robbers burst in and
stole 50 plants at gunpoint.

His neighbors griped, and Schmidt moved Genesis 1:29 (named for a
Bible verse about God inviting man to use all of Earth's seed-bearing
plants as food) to a business park. Eventually he found the farm on
Martin Lane.

Residents of the 11 ranchettes fronting the lane weren't exactly
shocked to learn from his Web site that Schmidt considered himself a
purveyor of medical marijuana. Like many folks in Sonoma County, where
more than 70% of the electorate backed Proposition 215, no one on
Martin Lane is philosophically opposed to medical use of marijuana.
They figured Schmidt would plant a few seeds and be done with it.
Summer came, and there was no sign of sunflowers or corn. Instead,
cannabis grew.

As the crop came in, the protection arrived--barbed-wire fences,
patrols and guard dogs. Infrared scopes and videotape equipment were
deployed, neighbors say.

"The whole thing had an air of absurdity to it," said next-door
neighbor Mary Roth. "Until we got scared."

Some of the guards had crossbows. A few neighbors had scary
confrontations with the dogs. A silhouette paper cutout of a human
figure was pinned on hay bales. Schmidt's crew left it up for target
practice. "It was plainly meant to intimidate," said Roth's husband,
Ted.

Janine Carpenter, who lives directly across the narrow street, said
she hadn't slept well most of the summer: Any bump in the night had
her up, fearing a threat. She kept her children, ages 5 and 8, from
playing out front. The Roths insisted their visiting grandchildren
stay inside.

Neighbors started calling the sheriff's narcotics division, but were
told nothing could be done. "They said they knew about Robert, but
their hands were tied," said Fran Begun, 77.

The Sonoma County sheriff's narcotics task force did not return calls
for comment. But other county officials say their reluctance to
intercede springs in large part from a 2001 court case on the medical
use of marijuana. Two proponents accused of growing 899 pot plants for
a San Francisco dispensary were acquitted after contending they were
caregivers for patients.

Schmidt, likewise, told neighbors that his marijuana was justified
under Proposition 215. Though county regulations set a limit of 99
plants per patient, Schmidt told neighbors he had more than 1,000
letters from sick people needing his pot as medicine.

Such arguments are considered pointless by federal drug agents. Under
U.S. law, the possession, use or cultivation of marijuana for any
purpose is a felony. Unfettered by state law, the DEA had been
conducting surveillance on Schmidt for more than a year, neighbors
later learned At dawn on a cloudless late-summer day, agents stormed
in with guns and chainsaws. Schmidt was handcuffed in a lawn chair,
left to bellow: "This is all legal, you know!" By the end of the day,
the pot crop he had nurtured for months had been hauled away.

Neighbors were elated to see it disappear. But Schmidt's crew was
irate. None had been arrested, so they lingered for days afterward,
trying to clean up the mess.

"It's something that doesn't make sense," said farmhand Jeremy
Mayfield. "The DEA is supposed to be fighting the war on drugs.
Instead they're putting 1,200 patients on the street to look for drugs
on the black market."

A lanky man with flames tattooed on his arms, Mayfield understands the
concerns of neighbors. But workers at the Genesis pot farm simply
wanted to keep the "medicine" safe for needy patients, he said. They
didn't mean to scare anyone except potential thieves.

Inside the house, a message from Schmidt is still scrawled on a board:
"Safety first; friendly fire is not friendly; good neighborhood
relations." If intruders approach, guards were told, call 911 and
alert the sheriff.

Outside, a graveyard of plant roots litters the property. Drug agents
punched holes in water tanks, Mayfield said, and cut electrical lines.
Mayfield said Schmidt fashioned Genesis 1:29 as his redemption, his
payback to society. In the early 1980s, federal officials say, Schmidt
was busted for pot smuggling and spent several years in prison. The
goal of Genesis, Mayfield said, was to free people who couldn't
cultivate--the old, the infirm, those stuck in cramped apartments--of
the black market's dangers.

Though drug agents put the value of the Genesis crop at more than $1
million, Schmidt told medical marijuana activists he planned to sell
it for far less. Top grade pot goes for about $4,800 a pound on the
street, but Schmidt's marijuana was expected to sell for $2,000 a
pound, said Lynette Shaw, founder of the Marin Alliance for Medical
Marijuana. "This," she said, "was a devastating loss for patients in
the North Bay Area."

But the neighbors on Martin Lane say all the risk was being dumped on
them.

What's needed now, the neighbors reason, is for government to sort out
the conflict between state and federal law. That won't come quickly,
they realize, so they have united behind a push for change in local
law. Last week, they dispatched a letter to Sonoma County supervisors
asking that zoning rules be altered to put residential areas off
limits to medicinal marijuana farms.

"We want it regulated, zoned," Begun said. Mike Mullins, Sonoma County
district attorney, said the folks on Martin Lane "had every right to
be afraid." But zoning restrictions would merely shift the problem to
rural areas, he added. The solution must be faced head on: Either
legalize medical use of marijuana across America or end what in
California has become "an absurd situation."

Supervisor Mike Reilly, a Proposition 215 supporter, admits he's
unsure how land-use rules apply to a crop that is "quasi-legal to
begin with." Reilly hopes the medical marijuana community will learn
to avoid farming in residential areas.

On Martin Lane, the old peace has returned. Schmidt is in federal
custody. His pot farm is dismantled. But some neighbors remain ill at
ease--about being cast as villains by medical marijuana boosters,
about retribution. And about the fate of Robert Schmidt.