MEDICAL POT DISPUTE BOILING OVER

SANTA CRUZ -- With a helicopter circling tightly overhead and a dozen local
officials applauding from a distance of 15 feet, medical marijuana patients
approached a table outside City Hall on Tuesday and chose from an array of
pot products-to-go -- muffins, tinctures and small baggies of the weed itself.

The dramatic demonstration came in response to an apparent federal
crackdown on medical pot in California that is starting to draw protests
from public officials from across the state.

"When our government becomes the aggressor against powerless people, I feel
I have a higher moral obligation to stand with the powerless," said Santa
Cruz County Supervisor Mardi Wormhoudt. "That's why I'm here today."

None of the officials who gathered on City Hall Plaza touched the pot,
though, and none of the recipients consumed it at the event, which was
provoked by the arrest two weeks ago of Valerie and Michael Corral,
founders of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana. The couple, who
helped write Proposition 215, the medical marijuana law passed by voters in
1996, have not been charged.

Federal agents destroyed the collective's farm. A week later, federal
agents raided a pot collective in Sebastopol, confiscating 3,454 plants.
Robert Schmidt faces federal charges of manufacturing and intending to
distribute pot and assaulting a federal officer in connection with the
Sebastopol raid.

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws counts 23
federal raids in the state in the past year against large and small pot
suppliers, sometimes after they've been acquitted by local juries.

Richard Meyer, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman in San
Francisco, refused to confirm or deny the presence of federal agents at or
above the hourlong Santa Cruz event Tuesday, which was attended by about 30
gaunt WAMM members, at least 100 pot patients bused in from around the
state and almost as many media representatives. Meyer also declined to
comment on possible DEA reprisals but said he was "shocked and appalled
that elected city officials would choose to just flaunt federal law."

The crowd on City Hall Plaza didn't see it that way. They waved signs
calling for "state's rights" and "health, not war."

Although the state Supreme Court has recognized Proposition 215 and local
officials have worked to implement it in Santa Cruz, Sonoma and some other
counties, the drug remains illegal under federal law and a 2001 U.S.
Supreme Court ruling.

That conflict has produced some tense relationships between federal and
California authorities.

"I don't want any DEA people in my county," Norman Vroman, the district
attorney in Mendocino County, said in an interview. "I will not cooperate
with any DEA people in my county."

After the DEA raided a cooperative in San Francisco last year, District
Attorney Terence Hallinan and three county supervisors joined pickets
outside a luncheon speech by DEA Chief Asa Hutchinson.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court decision, DEA agents have been swooping in all
over California -- slashing crops, making arrests or threatening forfeiture
proceedings against property.

The raids usually have been undertaken without informing local authorities
and in some cases over their strong objections.

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer this month wrote to U.S. Attorney
General John Ashcroft and Hutchinson, asking for a meeting of federal,
state and local officials to discuss what he called the DEA's "punitive
expeditions" against growers who are following state law. Federal-state
cooperation in crime-fighting was in jeopardy, Lockyer warned.

At the Santa Cruz demonstration, a statement was read from Lockyer
criticizing the federal government for "targeting people who were acting
consistently with the direction of California voters."

Santa Cruz County Sheriff Mark Tracy, who stayed away from the event
Tuesday, said in an interview: "I think there's been a very uniform
frustration at the local law-enforcement level, no matter who you talk to
in the state, about the lack of movement to put together coherent law
(that) separates this medical issue from criminal use."

Despite such pleas for clarification of the federal role, many officials
say the DEA's marijuana policy has become murkier rather than clearer.

Mike Ramsey, the district attorney in Butte County, which enforces a
six-plant limit, said, "The federal guidelines that we've been used to all
these years is that they're not interested in anything under 100 plants."

Nevertheless, in August, Butte County sheriff's officers stood eyeball to
eyeball with federal agents in a six-plant pot patch in Oroville while
Ramsey was on the phone with John Vincent, the U.S. attorney in Sacramento,
urging him to call off the DEA.

According to Ramsey, Vincent told him "that this was contraband -- they
could not leave it."

"After that," Ramsey said, "I have instructed our folks in the field that
the DEA is not to tag along unless it is clearly a huge grow that would
meet federal standards."

Officials elsewhere, including Gary Lacy, the district attorney in El
Dorado County, where the DEA confiscated thousands of records from an
agency that provided doctor's referrals to marijuana patients, said they
weren't troubled by the federal agency's actions.

Other county prosecutors, while unwilling to criticize the federal agency,
said they just didn't like being kept in the dark.

"Minimally, they probably should have let us know when they got there,"
Sheriff Tracy said.

James Fox, the district attorney in San Mateo County, which has been
sponsoring tests of marijuana's medical effectiveness, said, "I would be
very concerned if the federal authorities were coming into our county
without giving us prior knowledge because it could lead to a dangerous
situation" if DEA agents crossed paths with local undercover agents.

"The (federal) government needs to follow whatever their mandate is," said
Humboldt County District Attorney Terry Farmer. "(But) I wish they would be
more respectful."