POT GROWER GETS LETTER OF WARNING FROM DEA

McWilliams Says He Won't Be Intimidated

Federal law enforcement officials in San Diego may be preparing to crack
down on medical marijuana activist Steven McWilliams, who this week handed
out samples of the drug to sick people outside City Hall.

An agent from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration approached
McWilliams on the street as he was running errands yesterday afternoon and
hand-delivered a letter warning him to stop cultivating his plants or face
arrest.

Signed by U.S. Attorney Carol C. Lam, the correspondence advises McWilliams
that he is not protected by a state law that allows chronically ill
patients to use and grow the pain-relieving drug.

True to form, McWilliams said he would not be intimidated by the federal
government and vowed that he would continue growing and dispensing
marijuana to needy patients.

"We're being retaliated against," said McWilliams, who has made no secret
of the two dozen or so marijuana plants he grows outside his Normal Heights
home. "They don't want this, and they're going to try and shut us down."

Lam did not return calls seeking comment about the letter, but her office
released a statement saying that marijuana is not medicine under federal law.

Donald Thornhill Jr., spokesman for the DEA office in San Diego, defended
the warning to McWilliams as a routine response to unlawful behavior. The
DEA would help carry out any raid on McWilliams' garden.

"Obviously, there's a conflict with the federal laws and with what some of
these medical marijuana people are doing," Thornhill said. "The bottom line
for us is that medical marijuana continues to be illegal."

California voters in 1996 approved Proposition 215, which allows patients
to grow and use marijuana for medicinal purposes. Seven other states also
have adopted medical marijuana laws, but federal officials maintain that
the use or possession of the drug remains criminal.

The state Supreme Court last July granted limited immunity from prosecution
to medical marijuana patients, but the U.S. Supreme Court last year ruled
that medical necessity was no defense for violating federal drug rules.

In San Diego, city officials have been working for nearly a year to somehow
reconcile the incompatible laws.

A task force will present its recommended guidelines to a City Council
committee as soon as next month. The committee estimated that 1,500 or more
sick and dying patients would be eligible for special identification cards
the city plans to issue early next year.

Juliana Humphrey, an attorney who serves as chairwoman of the city task
force, said the letter from federal officials was disturbing.

"It's clear that the federal government, despite its many other obligations
at this point in history, seems to be making time to harass medical users
of marijuana," she said. "It's a very ominous and bullying tactic that the
feds are using to deal with a medical issue."

Delivery of the letter came two days after McWilliams conducted a
high-profile protest outside San Diego City Hall, where he criticized city
officials for moving too slowly to implement state law.

That demonstration was timed to support a much larger rally also staged
Tuesday in Santa Cruz. Local elected officials there joined 1,000 or more
medical marijuana patients in decrying a federal drug raid on a garden
outside Santa Cruz this month.

In that case, armed federal agents seized 100 marijuana plants and arrested
several people. The suspects were later released and prosecutors announced
that no charges would be filed.

Thornhill said the timing of yesterday's letter had nothing to do with the
protests this week. "Regardless of what the politics are, people are
subject to arrest and he's violating the law," the DEA spokesman said.

McWilliams is by far the leading advocate for medical marijuana in San
Diego County. His marijuana gardens have been raided several times, and
earlier this year he completed three years of formal probation he received
after pleading guilty to a 1998 misdemeanor charge of illegal cultivation.

San Diego police are well aware of McWilliams and generally steer clear of
his Normal Heights cannabis club, the only place south of Los Angeles where
medical marijuana patients can obtain the drug.

In fact, McWilliams said, when he complained last month that people were
trying to steal his plants at the start of the harvest season, police
informed nearby residents that the garden was legal under state law.