PEOPLE'S WILL IS CLEAR, IF NOT LAWS

Hagen Place, a nondescript two-story apartment building on a corner of 3rd
Street in Laguna Beach, would seem just what California voters had in mind
when they passed the medical-marijuana initiative in 1996.

Laguna Beach police may beg to differ.

Named after a local doctor and gay activist who died of the complications of
AIDS in 1991, Hagen Place has 24 apartments for people who are HIV-positive.
Many people with HIV have said that marijuana helps relieve nausea they
sometimes get from their medications.

And, by a 56% to 44% vote, Californians six years ago endorsed the use of
doctor-prescribed marijuana to relieve pain.

That, Ross Embry says, is why he grows and smokes marijuana.

It's also why Embry, 53, now faces a court date next month. About 9:30 p.m.
on Sept. 17, police entered through a patio screen door in his apartment and
arrested him for cultivating marijuana and possessing it for sale. In a
surprise, Embry says he wasn't surprised. Nor, even, all that angry. "I'm
not furious [over the arrest], because it's not unexpected," Embry says.
"Everyone who's media-savvy knows the [medical-marijuana] law is
capriciously enforced and there's great vacillation on the part of so many
communities all over California on how to prosecute and handle these cases."
Embry says he has been using marijuana for 18 months or so to counter nausea
that resulted after he altered his medication. He says he gives pot to
several other HIV-positive residents in the building but doesn't sell it.

Laguna Beach police might have other ideas. Sgt. Jason Kravetz says police
confiscated a large-enough number of plants to arouse suspicion. "It's a
quantity we don't come across all too often," Kravetz says. He confirmed
Embry's assessment of about 2 pounds in ready-to-use marijuana but says
there was an additional 20 pounds in plant form.

Embry is right about one thing: The medical-marijuana issue is far from
settled in California. The state Supreme Court ruled in July that
Californians can't be prosecuted in state court if they have a doctor's
recommendation to smoke pot for pain. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, has
said that nothing in federal law permits its use.

The most extreme example of a city's support of the initiative came last
week when Santa Cruz City Council members drew ailing residents' names from
a hat and symbolically dispensed pot prescriptions to them.

Embry concedes he has only a doctor's letter that acknowledges his marijuana
use but that doesn't specifically prescribe it. That is but another flaw in
the law, Embry says--the unwillingness of some doctors to put their name on
a pot prescription.

And he's not blind to people trying to circumvent Proposition 215, the 1996
initiative."Obviously, there are people who are using the medical-marijuana
issue as a ploy to market it," Embry says. "That's not out of the realm of
possibility at all."

As for his supply, Embry says, "Yes, I did cultivate it. I didn't have it
for sale. I never sold any of it. Sure, I've got friends in the building who
are in the same boat [with pain]. They have to buy on the street from people
with shady connections. Of course, they'd rather get it from someone in the
building." Embry says the cops couldn't have been nicer and told him his
case may or may not reach court.

"We don't take any sides with the medical-marijuana issue," Kravetz says.
"The courts have asked us not to be judge and jury when we're out in the
field."

Embry says he's prepared to fight. "I don't look at myself as being
victimized," he says. "All institutions are flawed. We have the ability in
this country to change flawed institutions."

* Dana Parsons' column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.