Bad Buzz

It was a day of mellow vibes and pungent smoke, a celebration of
live-and-let-live. Until it erupted into an ugly scene in downtown
Tampa.

The vibes got busted, man.

On both sides of Tampa Bay Saturday, small but devoted bands of
pro-marijuana advocates turned out to celebrate the joys of pot and
champion its legalization. It was all part of a larger event billed as
"Cannabis 2000: The Millennium Marijuana March," which took place in
dozens of cities from Cleveland to Prague.

Both Tampa and St. Petersburg hosted outdoor "hemp festivals" where
pot lovers listened to music, signed petitions, shopped for T-shirts
and bongs and generally chilled out.

In both cities they also marched on local government buildings -- and
that was when things heated up in Tampa.

What happened there was a remarkable collision of idealistic thinking
and cold reality. The whole point of the rally, from the protesters'
point of view, was that society should quit treating potheads as
criminals. They see marijuana use as a personal choice, about as
harmful as throwing back a couple of beers.

The hard fact, however, is that under current law marijuana smokers
are criminals, as Tampa police demonstrated in dramatic fashion. They
made nine arrests and left behind a decidedly unmellow group of protesters.

The Tampa rally started at Lykes Gaslight Park, where a reggae band
wailed in the shadow of the Tampa police department. The participants
were pleased; all afternoon there had been next to no police presence
in the park, unlike last year when cops watched their every move.

After two hours, a band of about 60 marched from the hemp festival to
the federal courthouse a few blocks away. They didn't have a permit to
march in the street so they dutifully stopped at each corner and
waited for a red light. No jaywalkers here.

A guy with a megaphone led them in chants:

Hey, hey, ho, ho,

This drug war's gotta go.

And:

Free the weed!

Plant the seed!

As they walked along Franklin Street, the faint, sweet odor of
marijuana wafted overhead. Even so, most of the group appeared to be
clear-eyed and unstoned.

"Who says pot smokers can't get motivated?" one of the activists
yelled. His compatriots cheered.

They reached the courthouse and again were pleased. There were no
federal marshals waiting for them on the steps, as at last year's
march. The group chanted some more and waved a "Thank You for Pot
Smoking" banner. Save for passing motorists tooting their horns, a
couple homeless guys were the only audience.

There were impassioned speeches. People imprisoned for possession of
marijuana should be freed, the speakers said. People with chronic
diseases who smoke marijuana to ease their pain should be allowed to
do so. Young people should be taught that grass can be used
responsibly, like alcohol.

"We need to change the laws. We need decriminalization and we want our
brothers and sisters out of jail," said Bob Quail, of the Pinellas
chapter of Florida Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (FORML).

The other side of the marijuana debate -- that heavy use impairs
critical thinking skills and can be addictive, according to the
National Institute on Drug Abuse -- was not presented.

A bearded man with an American flag wrapped around his body held high
a plastic gallon jug of yellow fluid marked "Sample This!" Turns out
it was apple juice, not urine. Loudly he ranted about a company that
apparently denied him a job after he failed a drug test.

It all seemed pretty routine. Then, suddenly, there was a commotion
among the protesters on the courthouse steps. Several men emerged from
the group, holding firmly onto the arms of other men.

It took a couple of seconds for what was happening to sink in.
Undercover police officers were in the crowd. It was a bust.

Three or four Tampa police cruisers squealed to a stop in front of the
courthouse, lights flashing. The crowd surged toward the street and
started jeering.

"Nazis! Nazis!"

Eight young men were handcuffed and placed in the cruisers. One man,
Alexantros Tsirambidis of Winter Park, wouldn't go quietly. He tried
to spin free from an officer's grasp. Other officers immediately moved
in. Within seconds, he was face-down in the street with two undercover
and two uniformed officers on top of him.

Tsirambidis, 34, screamed when his arm was twisted behind his back. An
officer's knee pistoned into his torso, over and over.

"I can't breathe!" Tsirambidis yelled, his head rearing
back.

The other protesters were shouting, shaking their fists, lunging
toward officers who stood at the curb, holding them back with raised
hands.

"You're taking away an American citizen's rights!" one man
bellowed.

"Free the prisoner!" someone else shouted.

Eventually Tsirambidis was brought to his feet, spread-eagled against
the side of the cruiser, then placed inside and driven away. He was
charged with disorderly conduct and obstructing an officer with
violence and later released on $2,600 bail.

The undercover officers started crossing the street back to Tampa
police headquarters.

The crowd moved after them.

"Yeah, go on back where you're safe!"

"Ya cowards!"

"Nazi pigs!"

It took several minutes for the protesters to calm down. Tomas Salazar
of Riverview grabbed a megaphone.

"Anybody know why this happened? And how to keep it from happening
again?"

The other protesters knew the answer: "CHANGE THE LAW!"

Then they linked arms, standing on the courthouse steps, and began to
sing: "All we are saaaayiiing ... is give peace a chance."

Peace might have had a chance but pot smokers didn't. The law is the
law, "and we're going to enforce it," Tampa Police Sgt. Tom Wolff said.

Back at the park, festival organizer Mike Palmieri of Zephyrhills was
shaking his head.

"We'll get our attorneys on this," he said.

Palmieri, 39, is a former licensed practical nurse whose license was
revoked, he said, "due to my political activism." Now he drives a cab
and heads the Florida Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
(FORML), which organizes events such as Saturday's.

Palmieri had hoped for a peaceful day, but he knows that the fight to
legalize pot smoking sometimes turns ugly.

"This is what happens," he said, referring to the arrests.

In St. Petersburg, the afternoon was calmer.

Recorded trance music throbbed through Williams Park, where teens on
in-line skates and middle-aged people with dogs on leashes mingled
near exhibits of marijuana pipes, hemp necklaces, incense burners and
Grateful Dead T-shirts.

A hand-painted sign board reminded anyone who might feel the urge to
light up, "You Are Solely Responsible for Your Own Actions."

"We haven't had any trouble," said festival organizer Kevin Aplin, who
had come from Melbourne, where he heads the Cannabis Action Network.
"A couple of policemen came through the park early, on bicycles,
looked everything over, and that was it."

At Aplin's booth, festivalgoers signed petitions to put an amendment
legalizing "medical marijuana" on the Florida ballot in 2002. Proudly
Aplin pulled one of the petitions from his stack; it was signed by an
86-year-old woman who lives in St. Petersburg.

"Seven other states have already voted this in," Aplin said. "And the
governor of Hawaii just signed it into law there. It says that people
with diseases such as cancer and AIDS would be able to legally use
marijuana for medicinal purposes, and their doctors wouldn't be
prosecuted, either."

At 4 p.m. a small band of protesters, some dressed in
black-and-white-striped convict costumes, left the park to march to
St. Petersburg police headquarters, a mile up First Avenue N. The
parade included several dogs on leashes, a sun-bonneted baby in a
stroller and a woman in a motorized wheelchair. She was Catherine
Jordan of Parrish, who uses marijuana to ease the pain and muscle
spasms of Lou Gehrig's disease.

"Smoking pot is not a crime!" the protesters chanted, to the beat of
bongo drums. "No victim! No crime!"

They reached the police department. Here there were no speeches, no
pot-smoking, no arrests. Police cruisers drove in and out of the
parking lot behind headquarters, the officers inside barely glancing
at the marchers as they passed.

The group made a U-turn and headed down Central Avenue, which was
otherwise deserted.

Back at Williams Park, a couple sat behind a card table plying their wares.
Hers: hair wraps made of hemp twine, $1 an inch. His: marijuana pipes
handmade from animal horns, adorned with feathers and crystals, starting at
$25.

They were suntanned, multi-tattooed, smiling entrepreneurs of the
cannabis counterculture.

Their names?

"Just put down Chip," said the man.

"And she's Suz. That's all. No last names."