MEDICAL POT USERS WELCOME, SAYS NEW INN

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."

Vroman said the move has been widely supported in his county. "California
voters have allowed for people with medical need for pot to have the drug,"
he said. "That the feds or state legislators think it's politically
incorrect is beside the point in Mendocino County."

It's also a moot point at the Compassion Flower Inn, where Tischler and
partner Maria Mallek-Tischler have created what they hope will be a
stress-free respite for medical pot users and others.

The owners, co-founders of the now-defunct Santa Cruz Cannabis Buyers Club,
bought a dilapidated Victorian owned in the 1860s by Edgar Spalsbury--a
judge and Civil War veteran who used morphine and opium to treat his
tuberculosis.

"This house has a history of medicinal drug use," said Mallek-Tischler. "We
hope to continue in that healing vein."

Decorated throughout with marijuana leaf stencils, hemp-decor plates and a
marijuana-leaf mosaic on the front walk, the inn opened with a touch of
inside humor: It accepted the first guests at 4:20 p.m. on April 20, or
4/20--the police numbers for a pot possession bust.

The owners said guests must have a doctor's note. Although no one is
allowed to light up inside the inn, pot smokers can toke away on the back
porch. Cigarette smokers are banished to the front porch.

The new venture has already been the butt of jokes nationwide.

Jay Leno recently poked fun in his monologue, insisting that the bed and
breakfast has a built-in cop-proof feature: The toilets flush when there's
a knock on the door.

One comedy Web site has compiled a list of comments supposedly overheard at
California's "pot hotel." They include: "Yes, I'm proud to say we have
roaches in every room," "I'd like to order room service, but I can't
remember what room I'm in" and "Oh look, honey, his and hers bongs!"

Tischler said there also have been calls from radio deejays for on-air
interviews that include questions such as "There's a doobie under every
pillow, right?"

But the inn owners warn that guests won't find any complementary joints on
their pillow at night.

Said Tischler: "This is strictly a bring-your-own affair."