PETITION FILED ON MEDICAL POT USE: ADVOCATES HIT PLACER ARRESTS

Medical marijuana advocates filed a petition Monday with the Placer County
Board of Supervisors demanding that local lawmakers take an active role in
implementing Proposition 215 -- the initiative permitting seriously ill
patients, with a doctor's permission, to grow and use marijuana.

Sick people and their caregivers "continue to be arrested in alarming
numbers," despite the initiative's passage in 1996, the petition said. Stop
the arrests, stop treating patients like criminals, stop forcing them into
the black market and stop the prosecution of sick and dying people who,
once charged, are forced to make bail, hire legal counsel and appear
repeatedly in court, it demanded.

Placer County officials acknowledged receipt of the petition, but
spokeswoman Anita Yoder said it would not, in itself, "trigger any
requirement for action."

Sheriff Edward N. Bonner, whose department has been criticized for what
activists consider to be an aggressive campaign against medicinal pot
users, said Monday that he recognizes the concerns raised in the petition.

"There has to be some agreement on how to enforce Proposition 215," he
said. Bonner called the act "poorly crafted" and without statewide
guidelines. "The main problem we can't get around is that under federal
law, marijuana is still a Schedule 1 drug," Bonner said.

Bonner said he welcomes the petition as an opportunity for dialogue on the
controversy.

"Ideally, we could come together as a community of people and say this is
what is acceptable and this is what is not," Bonner said.

The sheriff takes exception to the allegation that seriously ill patients
are being deprived of their rights.

He said that only six of the five dozen marijuana busts made by his
department in the last year or so have involved suspects with medical
clearances.

And in three of those cases, Bonner said, the marijuana and equipment
seized were returned and no prosecutions ensued when they were shown to be
patients with no indication of sales.

The only active cases involve possession for sale, Bonner said, which is
not exempt under the initiative.

Two of the defendants currently charged with possession for sale, former
Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Steve Kubby and Roseville dentist
Michael Baldwin, participated in the preparation of the petition, which is
signed by more than 60 individuals.

Kubby, who was arrested Jan. 19 when sheriff's deputies found 265 marijuana
plants at his Squaw Valley home, faces trial Feb. 15.

Baldwin is due to return to court March 9 for retrial of a possession for
sale complaint, which ended last May with the jury deadlocked 6-6. A search
of his home yielded 146 plants.

Both had pot-use recommendations from physicians at the times of their
arrests, but police claim the size of the crops and other indicators
suggested that the pot was intended for more than just personal medicinal
use.

According to Dale Gieringer, director of California NORML (National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), the petition filed with
Placer County is the first of several designed to combat what the activists
consider to be "police abuses."

Placer, El Dorado and some of the other Sierra jurisdictions are considered
by medical marijuana advocates to be "cowboy counties" where authorities
are trampling on the rights of seriously ill patients, Gieringer said.

Kubby, who since his arrest has moved with his pregnant wife to Orange
County to "start a new life under more compassionate government," suffers
from a rare form of adrenal cancer.

He says he smokes pot to stay alive.

And it is his contention that it is the police who are breaking the law
when they arrest medicinal marijuana users.

In their petition, the medicinal marijuana advocates urged Placer County to
adopt guidelines established in Oakland, which permit the use of 7.1 pounds
of pot per year per patient.

Under the Oakland standard, a patient may be growing as many as 144 plants,
48 of them flowering, at a time.

Sheriff Bonner on Monday said the Oakland guidelines are too high. But
Kubby said they are reasonable and are based on the government's own
studies. Both men agree that a consensus on the limits will emerge.

But until that point is reached, Placer County is taking it one case at a
time.