DEA CLAIMS DIBS ON HEART PATIENT'S POT

Heart patient Samuel Nim Kama thought he'd won the battle to make Portland
officials hand over the 2.5 grams of marijuana they took from him in 1999.

Having proved that he was entitled to the drug under Oregon's Medical
Marijuana Act -- and having prevailed twice in state court over the city's
objections -- Kama was ready to claim his property this month from a police
evidence room where it's sat for three years.

But in the end, it appears neither Kama, 52, nor the city will get to keep
the tin of stale pot denoted by Portland Police Property Receipt No. 680678.

The federal government does.

A federal magistrate on Wednesday authorized the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration to serve a warrant for the drug on the Portland Police
Bureau. Pending a hearing before a state judge today, DEA agents plan to
seize the drugs under the federal Controlled Substances Act.

"You're talking about federal law," said Rogene Waite, a DEA spokeswoman,
"which is clearly, according to the U.S. Constitution, supreme."

Kama's case is rare; his 2.5 grams were seized when the medical marijuana
law was just a month old. Oregon now issues ID cards so that the state's
roughly 2,500 registered medical marijuana users can avoid such conflicts
with police. But the law's authors called the DEA's move -- which follows a
recent crackdown on marijuana buyers' clubs in California -- a bizarre
example of the Bush administration's tough new stance in states that allow
marijuana as medicine.

"Doesn't the federal government have better things to do?" asked Richard
Bayer, chief petitioner of the Medical Marijuana Act and a Washington
County physician. He likened smoking 2.5 grams of 3-year-old buds, enough
for about two cigarettes, to smoking "lawn clippings after it didn't rain
for six weeks."

Richard White, Kama's attorney, said he was still weighing his options.

The city attorney's office -- in the odd position of arguing Wednesday that
it was obligated to give the marijuana to Kama and not the DEA -- did not
return phone calls for comment.

Kama lost his marijuana Jan. 28, 1999.

Police who were at the home of a Southeast Portland couple found a 71-plant
marijuana crop, manufacturing equipment, two pounds of frozen marijuana, a
scale and boxes of plastic bags. Kama drove up during the search and
voluntarily gave police the small tin of marijuana he was carrying.

The couple pleaded guilty to drug offenses. Kama said he was entitled to
his marijuana under state law.

The law, approved by voters in November 1998, allows people with conditions
such as AIDS or cancer to possess small quantities of marijuana for
treating symptoms such as pain and nausea. They must obtain a doctor's note
and fill out an application with the state Health Division.

Kama, who suffered a heart attack and has a defibrillator in his chest,
argued successfully that he needed marijuana to settle nausea that makes it
hard for him to swallow food and medicine. He was never prosecuted.

But the police, saying officers would be guilty of delivery of a controlled
substance, balked at returning the marijuana.

When Multnomah County Circuit Judge Robert Redding ordered police to return
Kama's marijuana, the City Council voted to take the decision to the Oregon
Court of Appeals.

When the court upheld Redding's decision, the city attorney's office went
to the Oregon Supreme Court, which decided May 8 not to consider the
appeal. Kama's attorney began talking to the city about how to retrieve the
marijuana.

That's when the DEA stepped in.

On May 16, Special Agent Jeffrey R. Wallenstrom, a 12-year veteran who has
examined 20 indoor marijuana grows, signed a seven-page affidavit asking
U.S. Magistrate Donald C. Ashmanskas for a warrant to seize the pot from
police custody.

Ashmanskas complied, but he gave the city until today to discuss the issue
further with Redding, the state judge who originally ruled Kama should get
his marijuana back. If the DEA serves the warrant after that, the bureau
will have to comply, said Lt. Frank Romanaggi of the drug and vice division.

Sgt. Brian Schmautz, a Portland police spokesman who also happened to be
the officer who originally took Kama's drugs away, said the bureau had
sought the DEA's advice earlier to clarify possible conflicts with federal law.

Since marijuana loses its potency at room temperature, Schmautz said Kama's
pot is probably long past its prime. But that's not the issue.

"The federal law does not distinguish between really good-looking bud or
really crappy-looking bud," Schmautz said. "It says you can't distribute a
controlled substance."