[From the FRONT PAGE of the 92997 Dallas Morning News and continued on
page 8.]

Boom or bust

Confusion and indecision have clouded the medicinal marijuana law that
California voters passed last year. Few on the front lines are sure of the
rules anymore.

By Doug J. Swanson / The Dallas Morning News

UKIAH, Calif. The marijuana's as high as a smuggler's eye, so now is the
raiding season in Northern California's dope kingdom.

That's why, on a recent sunny day, a man was hanging out the doorway of a
helicopter, staring at the forested mountainside 500 feet below, searching
for a flash of fresh, almost luminous green.

He was seeking the secret gardens of sinsemilla, some of the most prized
marijuana in the world. A single plant can be worth $5,000 or more.

Once he spotted some and there's usually plenty to find
camouflagewearing officers with machetes dropped in to chop the crop down.
It happens every year as the state's Campaign Against Marijuana Planting
goes on searchanddestroy missions across remote parts of California.

"We're cops," said Carl Sturdy, a member of the campaign's airborne assault
team, as he hacked stalks with a steel blade. "And it's against the law."

The law, however, has changed, though in undefined ways. Late last year the
state's voters approved a proposal allowing any seriously ill Californian
to use marijuana for medicinal purposes.

The proposal is vague on many points, so confusion and indecision have
followed. The marijuana battles continue, but few on the front lines from
police to patients to lawbreakers are sure of the rules anymore.

"Nobody appears to be doing anything to clear this mess up," said Mel
Brown, police chief in the Northern California city of Arcata. "We're
feeling our way through minefields."

Arizona voters also approved a medical marijuana proposal last year, and
several other states have laws that allow its use under limited
circumstances. But California may be the most closely watched, given its
status as the population leader and cultural trendsetter.

If nothing else, said research associate Peter Lepsch of the Drug Policy
Foundation, other jurisdictions will learn not to be so imprecise when it
comes to making pot law. "I think the confusion arising out of California
will lead to a lot of prudent discussion elsewhere," he said.

Many who suffer from diseases such as cancer, AIDS and multiple sclerosis
say marijuana eases their symptoms. Medical opinion has been split.

While the new law makes it legal for patients who have the recommendation
of a caregiver to smoke marijuana, growing it remains illegal. So does
transporting it. And the "cannabis clubs" springing up to serve patients
are clearly against the law, according to the state attorney general.

"All this will eventually have to be worked out in court," said Matt Ross,
a spokesman for the state Department of Justice.

Smaller daytoday confrontations and compromises are taking place already,
as local communities try to decide what will be allowed. But in the
Northern California counties of Mendocino and Humboldt, the issue becomes a
matter of big money.

In this region, a friendly climate, wooded seclusion and modern mores have
made pot the leading cash crop. "Without marijuana, we'd be a seriously
depressed area," said Humboldt County resident Ed Denson.

Not surprisingly, this is where the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting
concentrates much of its efforts. As far as CAMP is concerned, that's
contraband sprouting from the mountainsides, not medicine.

"They're all acting like it's legal to grow pot now," said Walt Kaiser,
operations commander for CAMP. "It's not."

Begun in 1983, CAMP is a force drawn from state and local law enforcement.
This year's raiding season began in August and concludes Friday, which is
when the state and federal funding of $556,000 runs out.

The official goal is to reduce marijuana cultivation to an unspecified
"maintainable level." CAMP raiders have destroyed more than 100,000 plants
this year, the highest annual total since 1989.

For participants it can be a sort of antinarcotics summer camp a chance
to fight the drug trade while dangling from helicopters and stalking in the
woods. Said California Highway Patrol officer Jack Polen, "It beats writing
traffic tickets and dealing with drunks."

One morning this month, on a typical day of operation, an airborne CAMP
spotter spied a bright green patch on a mountainside west of Ukiah.

No roads or paths led to the garden, so three CAMP agents were dropped in
by a cable attached to the helicopter. They found, among the scrub oaks,
400 marijuana plants, some as tall as 15 feet.

Two agents chopped and stacked the plants, which were heavy with valuable
buds, and prepared them to be lifted out by helicopter. A third, Sgt. Ron
Caudillo of the Mendocino County sheriff's office, scouted the area.

He found a handmade wire fence and burlap bags fashioned into backpacks.
"This is a Mexican grow," he concluded.

CAMP officials insist they target large commercial growers, not the sickly
patient tending a backyard medicine patch. And they emphasize that Mexicans
are increasingly taking over pot cultivation in California.

Nevertheless, marijuanafighting seems to have lost its glamour with
legislators. "It's not the hot drug anymore," said Mr. Kaiser.

CAMP's funding is a fifth of what it once was, a falloff reflected in the
title of its 1994 annual report, "Endangered . . . Not Extinct."

Extinct would be fine with many residents of Humboldt County, where CAMP
officers acknowledge they are disliked. Said Mr. Sturdy, a special agent
for the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, "Some of them little towns,
they're like enemy camps."

In one southern Humboldt County town, Redway, a group known as the Civil
Liberties Monitoring Project keeps track of potraider movements and passes
them on to the local radio station, KMUD. The station then broadcasts "CAMP
alerts."

"Everyone who encounters them hates them," said Mr. Denson, who heads the
monitoring project. The recent marijuana bust of a KMUD onair performer
known as Fred in the Hills did little to improve relations.

Mr. Kaiser, CAMP operations manager, insists the radio warnings serve
simply to help lawbreakers. "They're warning the growers," he said.

But Mr. Denson said the CAMP helicopters are a hazard. They frighten
children and livestock, he said.

"I'm sure they do have grievances," narcotics agent Sturdy said of
residents who object. "The underlying grievance is, we take their dope."

Taking dope from this part of Humboldt is a little like seizing corn in
Iowa. The region is famous for pot whose lushness and potency has been
given full color spreads in High Times magazine.

Redway and its neighbor, Garberville, used to be part of the Redwood Empire
until most of the redwoods were chopped down and the timberbased economy
collapsed.

In the late '60s and early '70s, young longhairs began filtering into
southern Humboldt. Many of the new settlers built ramshackle houses in
remote areas of the sparsely settled county, where they made their livings
by growing marijuana.

Now, Garberville and Redway are busy small towns where many of those
walking the streets look as if they fell off the Grateful Dead fan bus.
Tourists in search of redwoods stream through, but they aren't the main
source of revenue, Mr. Denson said. "Marijuana is the money that drives it."

Added Garberville resident Bruce Kanter: "There's a saying around here. You
can buy more with marijuana than you can with money."

Mr. Kanter, 47, came to Garberville from New York in 1967. He was persuaded
to make the trip, he said, after "I smoked some Humboldt bud."

He suffers from a painful skin condition in which the tissue tears easily.
Long soaks in warm water bring relief.

"I'm too impatient to sit in a bathtub for more than ten minutes," he said.
"Marijuana takes my mind off it and allows me to soak."

The pot comes from a local grower, who trades product for labor. Mr. Kanter
works "cleaning bud."

He has a letter signed by a local physician stating that he "derives relief
from his suffering" through marijuana. Should he be arrested for
possession, Mr. Kanter said, he hopes to show police the doctor's letter
and be on his way.

That's the sort of situation that gives Arcata Police Chief Brown pause.
"What do you do," he asked, "with somebody who's got an ounce in his pocket
in an alley at 2:30 in the morning, and he says, 'I got a recommendation
from Dr. Feelgood?' "

The chief's solution: policeissued identification cards for those using
medical marijuana. The department makes sure each patient has a doctor's
recommendation. And officers also keep close watch on the nonprofit
Humboldt Cannabis Center, a cooperative venture that grows its own pot and
distributes it to patients.

"Somebody had to do something," Chief Brown said. "And it went over, quite
frankly, like a fart in church with all the law enforcement communities
around here."

There have been isolated complaints that authorities have destroyed
marijuana intended as medicine. In August, Mr. Denson said, Humboldt
sheriff's officers ripped out six plants belonging to a muscular dystrophy
patient.

Last week some residents gathered at the man's home to replant his garden
with donated plants. "It has the open approval of the sheriff," Mr. Denson
said.

Not so, responded Chief Deputy Gary Philp."We're not agreeing to anything."

A "Peace Officer Guide" to medical marijuana issued by the state attorney
general says that in most cases a patient should need no more than one or
two plants.

Some users may not feel that's enough. In July police raided the house of a
Los Angelesarea man, finding 4,000 marijuana plants. His defense: He is a
cancer victim and researcher raising medical marijuana.

Sometimes police and prosecutors can't agree on what's appropriate. Last
week San Francisco police arrested an AIDS patient who was growing 50
plants at his home.

San Francisco district attorney Terence Hallinan said he was upset by the
raid and urged federal prosecutors not to bring charges.

Amid such disagreements, all that's certain now is that the legal ground
continues to shift, said Ray Raphael, author of "Cash Crop: An American
Dream," a sociological study of the pot trade in Northern California.

"Everybody's asking the same question, what's going to be the effect?" he
said of the medical marijuana law. "Nobody has the answer."