GIRLFRIEND'S TIP LEADS TO ARREST OF MEDICAL POT ADVOCATE IN LAFAYETTE

LAFAYETTE -- An East Bay medicinal marijuana activist was arrested Thursday
by authorities who seized more than 650 cannabis plants from his Lafayette
home after being tipped off by his live-in girlfriend.

Narcotics officers from the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department
arrested Kenneth Estes, 36, after his 27-year-old girlfriend asked
sheriff's deputies to serve a restraining order against Estes after a
domestic dispute -- and told them Estes was growing marijuana in their home.

The girlfriend gave the deputies permission to search the house, where they
found the plants under fluorescent growing lights in one room and several
sheds.

Estes was arrested on suspicion of possession and cultivation of marijuana
for sale. Lafayette Police Chief Hank Davis said Estes sold the pot at a
dispensary on University Avenue in Berkeley called Medicinal Herbs. Davis
said Estes told officers he sold marijuana there for medicinal use and
specified his occupation on the booking form as ``herbal distributor.''

"He claims that he's doing a service to society," Davis said. "He's very
forthcoming about what it's for."

Thursday's arrest came days after the U.S. Supreme Court issued an
emergency order at the urgent request of President Clinton to prevent an
Oakland medical marijuana club from dispensing its goods. Meanwhile, the
U.S. Court of Appeals is reviewing a decision made in July by U.S. District
Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco that allowed the Oakland club to
dispense marijuana.

Jeff Jones, executive director of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative,
said Estes was a volunteer who fancied himself an outspoken advocate for
medicinal marijuana. Estes -- paralyzed from the waist down with limited
use of his arms because of a past motorcycle accident -- legitimately needs
marijuana to ease his pain, Jones said.

"In Contra Costa, it's more like Placer or Sacramento County. You stand up
and tell people who you are, and you get arrested," Jones said. "He'll have
to take all those issues to a jury box."

In July, Estes turned himself in to authorities amid a small group of
supporters to answer possession and cultivation charges stemming from a
January raid on his former Concord home when police confiscated 1,500 plants.

The narcotics unit worked through the night getting the plants to the
sheriff's crime lab then obtained a warrant to search Medicinal Herbs.
Officers confiscated an unspecified amount of marijuana, materials to
distill cannabis into hashish and 30 pounds of marijuana brownies, Davis said.

Estes is being held at the Contra Costa County Jail in Martinez on $45,000
bail. Randy Moses, 41, of Union City, another man living in the Lafayette
home at the time, was arrested and booked on the same charges but released
yesterday pending further investigation.