STILL GRAZING IN GRASS DESPITE THREAT OF JAIL

TOMS RIVER -- Pot provider Edward Forchion says his efforts to
legalize the use of marijuana may send him to prison for the rest of
his life under New Jersey's "three strikes and you're in" law.

"I'm a capitalist, a marijuana provider," he admitted, explaining that
marijuana that costs $300 in Arizona brings $1,500 in New Jersey.

"No one has the authority to regulate my body. Where's that in the
Constitution?"

"The law made something created by God illegal," he added in an
interview Friday.

Forchion, 35, of Browns Mills, said he smokes grass daily because it
makes him feel good. He said it makes him feel better than the Paxil
and Zoloft he had been prescribed.

His crusade to legalize the use of the plant has prompted him to run
for Congress, the state Assembly, and Camden County freeholder. He
even formed his own Legalize Marijuana Party.

Now he says he'll run for Congress in the 1st District again, if he is
out of jail.

The petitions are all signed, but he won't turn them in until the last
minute.

Why? Because newspapers and other media will stop using his letters
and letting him on the air if they have to give equal time to his
opponents, he explained.

It's his views about marijuana that he blames for the recent "zeal" by
the state to prosecute him.

His journey to a life behind bars could start here, where there's an
effort to throw him out of the Pre-Trial Intervention (PTI) program
that spared him criminal prosecution on charges he had a stolen
double-barrel Colt .45 in his truck on Route 70 in Lakewood on April
18, 1996.

A state trooper pulled Forchion over to check the emissions coming
from the truck he was driving.

The trooper smelled other emissions when he spoke with Forchion,
according to court records. It was pot. Forchion admitted smoking it.
The lawman found the gun when he searched the truck.

Forchion, a cross-country truck driver, said he bought the gun from
another truck driver for protection.

It had been stolen from a man in Marion, Ind., in December
1994.

Executive Assistant Ocean County Prosecutor John Doran blocked
Forchion's admission into PTI, citing his "cavalier" attitude about
the drug charge and having the stolen gun.

His attitude hasn't changed. He says he'll plead guilty to a
disorderly persons charge of having marijuana in Mercer County after
being arrested for lighting up at the Statehouse.

"I got on the front page of the Trentonian and the AP picked it up.
It's worth the fine," he said.

Doran also noted when he blocked Forchion from PTI that he was also
charged with stealing seven $1,000 chips from Taj Mahal Casino in
Atlantic City.

Forchion eventually agreed to repay the casino, and Doran consented to
his entering the PTI program.

Superior Court Judge Peter J. Giovine admitted him on March 6, 1997,
ordering him to stay out of trouble for three years and the weapons
charges would be dropped.

Forchion was arrested five times after that, and before February, when
the effort to throw him out of the PTI program and make him stand
trial on the weapons charge began. It wasn't only the arrests, it was
his failure to tell PTI officials about them, that may lead him to
face the weapons charges in court.

Forchion claims he reported one of the arrests to his PTI
contact.

Two of those Camden County arrests were for having large amounts of
marijuana, 40 pounds in one case, 15 in another, he said.

He's fighting those charges, too, but if convicted of all three he
believes he'll be sentenced to life as a repeat offender.

A hearing on the motion to kick him out of PTI -- scheduled for Friday
before Giovine -- was postponed because Gerald Boswell, the public
defender appointed to represent him, could not go to court because of
a bad back.

In Camden County, Forchion says, he'll represent himself and try to
get a jury to nullify a drug law that increases the penalty for having
large amounts of marijuana.

That's the case involving 40 pounds of marijuana.

The other one, involving 15 pounds of it, is "bogus," Forchion claims,
saying a man he knows got arrested with the pot and said it was his.