WHERE THERE'S SMOKE, THERE'S ANOTHER MARIJUANA PROTEST

UNIVERSITY PARK -- Retired Penn State professor Julian Heicklen was
arrested for marijuana possession at the front gates of the Penn State
campus Thursday during what is being billed as a 30-hour demonstration to
protest laws against the drug.

Heicklen said that he had already been arrested five times for marijuana
possession since January and is awaiting a trial date.

"The lighted marijuana weed is the torch of freedom," he said over a
portable loudspeaker, smoking what he claimed was a marijuana cigarette.
"It is immoral to arrest someone for owning a vegetable."

Heicklen and about a dozen supporters sat at the intersection of South
Allen Street and College Avenue beginning at noon as crowds attending the
Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts swarmed around them.

Penn State police arrested Heicklen at 12:55 p.m. after smelling the smoke
from the cigarette. Heicklen went limp, forcing police to drag him away and
lift him into a police car as supporters cheered his cause.

District Justice Carmine Prestia arraigned Heicklen at 2:40 p.m. and set
bail at $50,000. Heicklen was sent to Centre County Prison, where he was
being held as of 4:30 p.m. Thursday.

The Centre County Libertarian Party sponsored the demonstration, called the
30-Hour Marijuana Smoke Out. It is scheduled to run eight hours a day from
Thursday through Saturday and six hours on Sunday, when the arts fest ends.

Lester Grinspoon, a psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School who has
written in favor of legalizing marijuana, is one of 23 scheduled speakers
for the event. Other speakers include Libertarian Party candidates for
state offices and officials with the National Organization for the Reform
of Marijuana Laws.

Prior to his arrest, Heicklen acknowledged the harmful effects of smoking
marijuana but said that possessing the drug should be legal anyway.

"The most fundamental human right of all is to have control over your own
body," he said. "That means the right to do stupid things with it, as long
as you don't hurt anyone."

Other demonstrators said marijuana can be used as an effective sleep aid,
pain reliever or antidepressant.

Penn State freshman Rebecca Seifried, observing the rhetorical styles at
the demonstration as an assignment for an English class, said the medical
value of marijuana is not absolute.

"Most medicines have side effects," she said, noting that marijuana has
been found to cause memory loss.

"That's pretty significant," she said. "It might get out of control."