DRUG CASE DROPPED -- MAN GETS HIS POT BACK

If you never thought you'd live to see the day police would have to
return marijuana and guns to a person they had busted on drug charges,
you should have been in Auburn on Wednesday at the Placer County
Sheriff's Department.

Chris Jay Miller, 48, of Citrus Heights backed his pickup truck to the
door of an evidence shed behind sheriff's headquarters and, with help
from Sgt. Keven Besana, filled its cab and much of its bed with items
that ordinarily would be considered contraband:

Bags and jars of marijuana and plant clippings, grow lights,
hydroponic tubs, two revolvers, two rifles, a camouflage bulletproof
vest, circulating fan and other gadgets, most of them used in the
cultivation of pot.

All the property had been seized March 18 when five officers from
Placer County served a search warrant issued in Sacramento on Miller
and his wife, Penny, at their Victory Lane residence in Citrus Heights.

As Miller recalls it, "They came in in SWAT gear and with a military
mind set."

Both Millers were arrested when the invading officers discovered five
marijuana plants and a dozen clones 6 to 8 inches tall being watered
by a drip system and nourished by heat from two 1,000-watt grow lights
in a wood-frame outbuilding.

Miller said that when he explained he was growing the pot legally
under provisions of Proposition 215, the initiative passed by
California voters in 1996 authorizing the compassionate use of
marijuana for medical purposes, he was asked:

"Are you dying of cancer or AIDS?"

And when he replied, "No," an officer informed him, "Then Proposition
215 doesn't apply to you," Miller said.

But in the months and investigation that followed, the Placer County
district attorney concluded that Miller may, indeed, meet Proposition
215's guidelines.

He has been using marijuana to fight chronic pain, muscle spasms and
arthritis as an alternative to addictive pain killers prescribed to
him for more than 10 years following a series of disabling car and
motorcycle accidents.

Based on the "severity of the defendant's medical condition" and his
possession of a written recommendation by a licensed physician,
prosecutor David H. Tellman on July 19 persuaded the court to dismiss
all charges against Miller.

Out $15,000 in legal fees and disturbed by the trauma inflicted on his
wife and their 11-year-old daughter, who happened to be seated at the
kitchen table when police burst into their home, Miller said he "got a
raw deal" and intends to pursue the possibility of a lawsuit.

"Medicinal marijuana works," Miller declared Wednesday. "It's not a
hoax, it's not a joke. It works. Society is just going to have to
accept it. In fact, I think society has accepted it but law
enforcement hasn't."

After petitioning the court for return of his property, and winning,
Miller collected his pot, guns (described in court papers as family
heirlooms passed on to him by a great-uncle in 1985) and grow gear and
drove out of the sheriff's evidence enclosure to the congratulations
of medical marijuana advocates and applause from neighbors who had
gathered to watch the process.

Sgt. Besana, a member of the county's marijuana eradication team and
one of the five officers who participated in the original search and
arrest of Miller, handled the exchange good-naturedly and offered some
pointed observations about Proposition 215.

"It's frustrating," he said, "both to police and to the people on the
other end."

There are no clear guidelines to what is acceptable -- and what isn't
- -- under the Compassionate Use Act, but he said law enforcement can't
ignore the threat posed by marijuana.

"It's the number one drug in the inner schools," he
declared.

Since its passage in November 1996, implementation of Proposition 215
has been left up to the individual counties, creating a confusing,
often contradictory approach to a law that the state has adopted but
which is contrary to federal drug policies.

No one pretends to know exactly how many plants are acceptable to meet
the medical needs of any one individual, and jurisdictions throughout
the state are applying different standards.

In Oakland, medical users may keep up to 144 indoor plants or 60
outdoor plants.

In Marin County, the District Attorney's Office said it would not
prosecute anyone growing fewer than six mature or 12 immature plants.

And in Placer County, prosecutors refuse to set limits.

Even in his request for dismissal of the Miller case, Deputy District
Attorney Tellman made it clear that his application "is not intended
to signal any opinion or position . . . regarding the acceptable
number of plants or quantity of processed marijuana which may be
possessed by a medicinal user."

Miller said he accepts the court order returning his belongings to him
as a clear victory for Proposition 215.

"It's telling the law they have to follow the law," Miller said. "I've
gotten my property back. The system works."