LOCKYER ASSAILS FEDERAL POT OPERATIONS

California's attorney general on Friday requested a meeting with top U.S.
drug officials to discuss "a growing list of provocative and intrusive
incidents of harassment" by federal agents against medical marijuana growers.

Raids of locally sanctioned pot operations are being carried out with
disdain for local law enforcement, undermining joint efforts "to fight
dangerous drugs and the major narco-terrorist organizations that
manufacture and distribute them," state Attorney General Bill Lockyer said.

The letter was sent by fax to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Asa
Hutchinson, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Calls to the U.S.
Justice Department, where both work, were not returned after it was
released late Friday.

Marijuana has been legal for certified medical use in California since
1996, but remains illegal under federal law. Federal agents at first
ignored most growers who complied with state law. That changed in 2001,
Lockyer said, when medical users became targets of "punitive expeditions,"
carried out regardless of whether convictions could be won.

Lockyer's letter came a day after a DEA raid on a medical marijuana farm
north of Santa Cruz that has operated openly for several years in
cooperation with county law enforcement.

Agents destroyed approximately 150 growing plants that would have been the
source of free marijuana for 200 patients. They arrested Valerie and
Michael Corral, the founders of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana
and key figures in the Proposition 215 campaign. No decision had been made
Friday whether to file charges.

Three weeks ago the DEA raided a six-plant marijuana garden in Oroville,
despite a plea from the district attorney. Apparently no charges were filed.

Speaking recently in San Francisco, Hutchinson said targeting medical
marijuana users was "not within the federal priority system" but that the
DEA would continue to go after large-scale traffickers.