LAW: CAREGIVERS OR DRUG PEDDLERS?

O.C.'s Cannabis Coop Maneuvers Through A Legal Gray Area.

She loved her work. Her marriage was strong. She paid her bills.

But before the passage of Califoria's medical marijuana initiative, Julie
Cozzaglio, mother of three, periodically risked it all to shop for pot
Orange County's darkest recesses.

"Do you know where I used to have to go?" said Cozzaglio, who has multiple
sclerosis and uses marijuana to relieve the symptoms. "I used to have to go
to (a cheap motel) by Disneyland. There were cocaine busts. Heroin busts. I
had to go to those kinds of places to get my medicine. It was ridiculous
and scary."

All that changed Jan. 1, when Prop. 215 took effect. The socalled
Compassionate Use Act of 1996, approved by 56 percent of California voters
in the November 1996 election, legalized the cultivation and possession of
marijuana by anyone who has a doctor's note authorizing its use.

As a result, Cozzaglio's marijuana is now handdelivered to her front door
in broad daylight by a member of the Orange County Cannabis Coop.

Depending on who you talk to, the organization, barely a year old, is
either an illegal dope ring or a godsend to people in pain.

"This club has been wonderful," Cozzaglio said, cradling a quarterounce
baggie of coopsupplied cannabis in her living room while her daughter,
Jessica, 4, watched "Seasame Street."

"They're peddlers of marijuana," counters Deputy District Attorney Carl
Armbrust.

Whatever they are, they're not going away.

Dismissed as a "publicity stunt' a year ago by Orange County Sheriff Brad
Gates, leader of the campaign against Prop. 215, the group now serves about
60 patients, according to founder Marvin Chavez of Santa Ana.

One of those patients is Chavez himself, a fraillooking man who wears a
back brace as a consequence of a spinal disorder.

Undaunted by a previous brush with the law a 1988 cocaine possession
conviction in Los Angeles County Chavez argues that medical marijuana
needs to be available and affordable, to those who need it.

"Now that I'm a patient, I know what suffering is about," he said

Chavez has big plans for the group.

He's obtained a business tax certificate from the city of Garden Grove, a
badge of legitimacy he hopes will allow the coop to establish a marijuana
farm there.

He is also conferring with Santa Ana planning officials in hopes of opening
an office where people can freely obtain or deliver medical marijuana,
medical information and paraphernalia.

"I want patients to take charge," Chavez said, sitting in his living room
beside a lifesize anatomy chart.

At present, the coop functions as a floating alternative pharmacy, a
looseknit collection of patients, caregivers, growers and buyers. Four
volunteer staff members, including Chavez, deliver plastic packets of the
herb to designated caregivers or to patients directly.

More than half the marijuana the coop distributes is purchased on the
black market by "procurers" a practice Chavez hopes to end as soon as
members can cultivate a sufficient supply on their own.

"Everybody's watching us we're going to be the No. 1 model in
California," he said.

The coop requires that patients seeking the drug produce medical documents
showing they have been diagnosed with a condition that can be treated with
marijuana. Those documents are then verified, Chavez said, by Anna Boyce, a
registered nurse from Mission Viejo who became a leading proponent of Prop.
215 after her husband died of cancer.

If necessary, the coop refers patients to a handful of area doctors
willing to write notes authorizing marijuana as a treatment.

"A lot of doctors look at you like you're trying to score something," said
Nora Hyland, 38, of Huntington Beach, who finds that pot relieves her
glaucoma and other ailments. "It's embarrassing to ask. But then Marvin
turned me on to a doctor."

That doctor is Del Dalton, a Laguna Niguel anesthesiologist. Dalton said he
recommends the drug "once in a while" and only to patients who have
serious illnesses that are beyond dispute, such as cancer and AIDS.

He examines patients first, he said, and treats each recommendation as if
it will have to be defended in court.

"I don't do borderline cases," he said, noting that the law remains unclear
on exactly who is eligible to use medical marijuana.

Dalton declined to say how many recommendations he has written since the
law took effect. He added that he knows of no other doctor in Orange County
willing to write a note recommending marijuana for patients.

"I know patients who tell me it helps them," he said. "They're not liars,
as far as I know."

Certain coop members who provide marijuana to patients are swimming in
risky legal waters, too.

The coop, for example, asks patients to make a $20 "donation" for each
quarterounce, but prosecutors say they don't buy the group's semantics.
They insist that any time money and marijuana achage hands, it's a sale.
And selling pot is still a crime in California, regardless of the
recipient's medical condition.

"You say to me: 'Where are people supposed to get their marijuana?'"
Armbrust said. "I say, I didn't write the law. I don't know the answer to
your question."

The legal picture became murkier Friday when the 1st District Court of
Appeal ruled that the Cannabis Buyers' Club in San Francisco was breaking
the law by selling marijuana to patients. Members of the buyers' club have
vowed to appeal to the state Supreme Court.

"It's not going to affect us," Chavez said. He contends that the Orange
County coop, unlike the San Francisco club, merely accepts donations and
doesn't actually sell marijuana.

The donation vs. sale issue is pivotal to David Lee Herrick, 47, a club
volunteer who was arrested in May after police found seven bags labeled
"medical marijuana" in his Santa Ana motel room.

The coop maintains that Herrick was acting within his legally protected
role of caregiver. But what, precisely, constitutes a cargiver is just one
of the many areas left unaddressed by Prop.215.

"We're defining what caregiver means," Chavez said, suggesting that a
caregiver can serve an organization, not just an individual. "We're trying
to interpret it one way; they're trying to interpret it the other way."

While the legal issues get thrashed out, patients affiliated with the coop
wonder why there's so much controversy over a plant they praise for
everything from reducing eye pressure to alleviation cancer pain.

"I'm not a pothead," Cozzaglio said. "I have responsibilities, and when I
feel pain I do what I need to do. Then I go about my business."

At least for now, so does the coop.