CALIF. 'BED, BUD AND BREAKFAST' FIRES UP MEDICAL-POT FLAP

SANTA CRUZ--Andrea Tischler is perched atop ground zero of
California's escalating medical marijuana wars.

She and a partner Thursday opened the nation's first "bed, bud and
breakfast," a cozy Victorian inn with a backyard oasis where medical
pot users can fire up right next to the swimsuit-optional hot tub.

"This inn will be a comfort zone for people with a medical need for
marijuana," said Tischler, a former schoolteacher. "While it may be
the nation's first, many more will follow."

The Compassion Flower Inn opens on the heels of a new city ordinance
that allows people with diseases such as AIDS, cancer and arthritis to
legally grow and use pot.

Defying federal authorities, Santa Cruz is one of several California
communities that has jump-started efforts to put the state's
controversial medical marijuana law into practice.

State voters passed Proposition 215 in 1996 to permit the sick to
obtain marijuana under a doctor's care.

But federal prosecutors stepped in and closed down six cannabis buyers
clubs in Northern California, saying marijuana use is still illegal
under U.S. law. State legislators have steered clear of the issue,
backing away from a proposal for a statewide cardholder system that
would allow registered medical marijuana users, providers and growers
to avoid arrest.

"This issue has been a political hot potato, and it's been hard for
state officials to reach any consensus," said Anthony Condotti,
assistant city attorney in Santa Cruz. "So cities and counties at the
grass-roots level have taken the lead."

Both the Santa Cruz law and the new bed and breakfast are being
closely monitored, not only by cities statewide but also by the
Clinton administration.

"Our position continues to be that marijuana remains a prohibited
controlled substance," said Gretchen Michael, a U.S. Department of
Justice spokeswoman. "What we say to people in Santa Cruz is that no
matter what laws you pass, the federal government could still come
knocking."

Santa Cruz Councilman Mike Rotkin said the city is not looking for a
fight with the federal government. "But the need for this law is so
great, it's worth the risk," he said. "How do you tell a cancer
patient enduring painful chemotherapy they can have morphine but not
marijuana. It's just so illogical."

The Santa Cruz ordinance was inspired by Valerie Corral, a medical
marijuana user who has long provided free pot to dying friends and
relatives.

Since 1993, operating from a secret and isolated mountainside
location, she has helped run the nonprofit WO/MEN's Alliance for
Medical Marijuana, which has dispensed the drug for free to more than
200 sick people, including the terminally ill, throughout Santa Cruz.

"To make this concept palatable to the feds, we've got to take the
profiteering out of medicinal marijuana," said Corral, who said she
regularly smokes pot to counteract pain from epilepsy. She was a
member of a special medicinal marijuana task force created last year
by state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer.

Corral approached Santa Cruz officials in 1998 about a new law and
immediately won their backing. She is now lobbying Santa Cruz County
officials to approve a similar law.

"If enough communities follow suit with a patchwork of different
medical pot laws, state legislators will have to step in and bring
some order to implementing Prop. 215," Rotkin said. "So far, they've
avoided this like the plague. That's why we went to a ballot measure
in the first place."

Proposition 215 did not set standards for the amount of marijuana that
medicinal users could have in their possession. In Mendocino County,
authorities have devised their own numbers: Patients can apply to the
county Health Department for an ID card that allows them to possess up
to six marijuana plants and 2 pounds of the drug.

"That may sound like a lot, but marijuana is a once-a-year crop," said
Mendocino County Dist. Atty. Norm Vroman. "If you run out, you can't
go to the grocery store to buy more."