WOMAN RUNNING MEDICAL POT CLUB BUSTED

Cops Raid Grandmother's Home; Push Renewed For Legal Drug Use

A 65-year-old Elmira grandmother faces criminal charges after police raided
her apartment and confiscated three pounds of pot she was planning to
distribute through her medical marijuana buyers club.

Sherrie D. Wilkie, who suffers chronic pain from arthritis and other
ailments, said she started the buyers club in 1998 and began making regular
trips to New York City to buy pot for about a dozen other Twin Tiers
residents who use marijuana as medicine.

But that routine changed last week when Elmira police raided her apartment
and confiscated nearly three pounds of high-grade marijuana and 40 grams of
hashish, investigators said. The drugs were worth $10,000 to $15,000,
investigators said.

Wilkie, who lives at Edward Flannery Apartments, a high-rise complex for
senior citizens on the city's Southside, now faces a felony charge of
second-degree criminal possession of marijuana. If convicted, she could be
sentenced to seven years in prison.

Wilkie said her health is failing and she is in constant pain because she
has no marijuana to smoke.

"They took it all, every last bit of it," said Wilkie, a retired secretary
who has been living on Social Security disability since 1974.

She said she tried more conventional medications, but they didn't relieve
the pain. Now, she said, she is in such intense pain that she intends to
kill herself if she is prevented from smoking the illegal drug in the
future. "I don't fear death as much as I fear the pain," Wilkie said from
her home Tuesday.

Wilkie's case highlights the politically sensitive issue of medical
marijuana use. Possession and sale of marijuana remains illegal in New York
and Pennsylvania. But efforts to legalize the drug for medical use have
increased nationwide. At least eight states -- Alaska, Arizona, California,
Colorado, Oregon, Maine, Nevada and Washington -- allow the use of medical
marijuana.

Wilkie said she doesn't sell the drug for profit, but reinvests the money
to buy more marijuana for club members, some of whom have cancer, AIDS and
chronic back pain. She also uses the money to cover the cost of her own
personal supply -- about one-half ounce a week.

While she has no known criminal record, police said Wilkie has broken the
law, and that's what brought them with a search warrant to her apartment.

"She's violating the law and our job is the enforce the law, especially in
a case like this, where we had numerous complaints about her," said Chemung
County Assistant District Attorney Charles Metcalfe.

The police aren't at fault, it's the law that needs to be changed, said
Nicholas Eyle, executive director of Reconsider, a Syracuse-based nonprofit
organization working to educate the public about drug laws.

"I understand the dilemma the police are in," Eyle said. "What we're trying
to do is get (Wilkie) an attorney and focus some press attention on her so
the public can better understand the issue, and we can show them that these
laws need to be changed."

The drugs were packed in about 50 bags of various sizes, and were found all
over Wilkie's apartment, police said. Wilkie said she labeled one bag "Oh
My God," referring to its high potency.

"That was the highest quality pot I ever had," she said. "In New York City,
they sell it to the Wall Street crowd -- the rich people from Long Island
- -- for $60 to $90 a gram."

Most commercial-grade marijuana sells for $3 to $10 a gram, police said.

Wilkie said she needs the high-quality pot for her pain. She takes 11
prescription medications for coronary heart disease (she has a pacemaker),
high blood pressure, thyroid gland problems, high cholesterol and scores of
allergies.

She said a liver condition prevents doctors from prescribing pain killers
that work as well as the marijuana. She said she tried prescribed morphine,
but it made her sick.

The Star-Gazette published a story in May 1998 about Wilkie, shortly after
she organized the medical marijuana club. She was given an alias in the
story to protect her identity. At the time, local law enforcement officials
said it was unlikely they would investigate the club, unless someone
complained.

That's exactly what happened, Metcalfe said. The first of several
complaints began in July when Wilkie lived alone in a small apartment on
Hoffman Street, Metcalfe said.

She moved to Flannery Apartments in November.

Police raided her apartment after a confidential police informant bought
marijuana from Wilkie sometime during the six-month investigation, Metcalfe
said.

Police knew exactly where she kept her drugs -- in a blue Champion sports
bag in the living room of her small, neatly kept apartment. The color of
the bag was spelled out in the search warrant issued by Elmira City Court
Judge Thomas E. Ramich, who is scheduled to arraign Wilkie on Thursday,
when she will be formally charged.

In the meantime, friends and pro-marijuana groups are coming to her aid,
trying to find an attorney to handle her case for free because she has
little money.

Police confiscated nearly $1,000 in the raid. About $200 of it was from the
$620 she gets each month from Social Security, Wilkie said.

It's unlikely that Wilkie will be sent to the Chemung County Jail because
of her medical conditions and because she poses no real threat to anyone,
Metcalfe said. She'll probably be released on her own recognizance.

"We didn't arrest her and put her in jail when we searched her apartment
and confiscated the drugs, because, at the time, we didn't know how much
marijuana she had," Metcalfe said. "They had to sort it all out before
deciding what to charge her with."

Police also confiscated several marijuana pipes, a bag of marijuana seeds
and stalks, and a set of triple-beam scales that Wilkie said she used to
weigh the drugs.

Wilkie hasn't been charged with sale of a controlled substance, and
probably won't be, Metcalfe added.

Wilkie said she doesn't believe what she is doing is wrong.

"Marijuana is a plant that God put on this earth to help people," she said.
"It works best in its natural form. It's a member of the herb family and
it's the only thing I've found that gets rid of my pain. Unfortunately, the
government has made it illegal."