MEDICAL MARIJUANA ADVOCATE FACES NEW U.S. INDICTMENT

SAN FRANCISCO - A leading medical marijuana advocate who successfully
appealed his federal conviction this year has been indicted on new
criminal charges that include tax evasion and money laundering.

The man, Ed Rosenthal, a well-known spokesman for the movement to
legalize marijuana, was already facing a retrial on federal charges
of growing marijuana for medical use. He is to be arraigned Monday in
Federal District Court here on the new indictment, unsealed late Thursday.

It accuses Mr. Rosenthal, 61, of 14 felony charges that include
cultivating marijuana plants; laundering $1,850, which the government
says he got from selling the plants to medical dispensaries; and tax
evasion. His tax returns, prosecutors said, omitted income from the
sale of the plants.

Reached Friday at his home in Oakland, Mr. Rosenthal said he thought
the efforts to prosecute him were part of a campaign to shutter
medical marijuana sites in California and to subvert the state law
allowing them.

"They want to shut me up," he said. "They are vindictive. They don't
like anybody beating them, and they will go after you again and again
until they wear you down."

The state and the federal government have been locked in a legal and
cultural battle over the medicinal merits of marijuana since 1996,
when California voters approved a ballot measure giving seriously ill
patients the right to buy and use the drug with a doctor's prescription.

The Drug Enforcement Agency has been aggressive in investigating
medical marijuana facilities. Last week, the authorities raided and
closed five Bay Area sites, arresting 15 people.

A spokesman for the United States attorney's office, Luke Macaulay,
would not comment on the new indictment, but said, "Drugs are a
priority for the Justice Department, being that marijuana is illegal
under federal law."

The new charges against Mr. Rosenthal are similar to those in a 2002
federal indictment. At the time, Mr. Rosenthal worked for the City of
Oakland and was sanctioned under city and state laws to grow
marijuana plants and sell them to dispensaries. He was convicted by a
jury, but a federal appeals court overturned the decision, citing
juror misconduct. He was granted a new trial, and prosecutors were
moving forward, but the new federal indictment supersedes the earlier one.