HAZY FUTURE

The boyish young man in the khaki slacks and brown sweater looks
Warren County Attorney Bryan Tingle straight in the eyes and declares
that his constitutional rights are being squashed.

He tells Tingle from his seat in the courtroom that Iowa's legal
system is treading on his freedom of religion, and on the freedom of
science and medicine to explore treatment alternatives for the
chronically and mentally ill.

With eyes gazing intently through his curly black hair, he tells
Tingle that he's not afraid of going to prison. And there's a
distinct possibility that, within a few weeks, he could land himself
there for five years.

He tells Tingle, who stands over him in a suit and tie, that if he
were to receive a prison sentence, he'd like to be held in contempt
of court and serve additional time.

"I'd have serious contempt for that decision," he says.

This is Jason Karimi, a 21-year-old Milo native whose allegiance to
the illegal drug marijuana has nearly landed him in prison on
multiple occasions since 2007, most recently during the
above-outlined Jan. 5 probation revocation hearing.

But despite the legal troubles, Karimi says marijuana has saved his
life, dragging him twice out of suicidal depression. He has argued,
and continues to argue, for his right to use the drug as medication
to treat mental illness - a lingering anxiety recently diagnosed as
bipolar disorder.

Karimi's is the story of how an honor student became a
twice-convicted criminal. How a young man decided to treat his own
mental illness with an illegal drug. How an aspiring computer
technician became an amateur advocate for medical marijuana.

"I've had a crazy last couple of years," Karimi said Jan. 6, leaning
forward in an armchair in a friend's Altoona apartment. "People don't
believe me, sometimes, when I try to tell them what's happened."

Karimi was an honor student during his senior year at Southeast
Warren High School. School records for 2006-07 show he made "A" honor
roll the first semester and "B" honor roll the second semester.

Also that year he played a trumpet solo, "Rock Around the Clock,"
during halftime at a Warhawks football game.

Earlier in his academic career Karimi wrote an article for the
district newsletter. It promoted the use of vending machines as a
school fundraising source.

Meanwhile, by his own account, Karimi rarely paid attention in class.
He knew answers without studying the subject matter, or he faked his
knowledge.

On a history assignment, he used a Web site to gather information
about Napoleon Bonaparte - he still pronounces it "Bonapart-ay" - and
passed the information off as a report on a 1,000-page book.

Karimi was a small-time trouble maker since elementary school, but
also one of the smartest kids in class, said Milo native Victoria
Taggart, 21, a friend and classmate since kindergarten.

"He would always get in trouble for reading books instead of paying
attention," Taggart said. "He was such a nerd, but at the same time
he was hilarious. He always had smart-ass comments, and he was so
quick with them."

During their high school years, Taggart knew that sitting down with
Karimi at a party meant long conversations about "random things,"
often including politics.

"I didn't go there with Jason because it was like, 'First of all, I
don't know what you're talking about, and second of all, you're going
to talk forever.' "

The two friends split paths after high school, except for a brief
encounter in late 2008. The first time they talked at length was in
October 2009, when Taggart was surprised to hear Karimi's story.

During a long phone conversation, Taggart lost Karimi's train of
thought.

She put him on speakerphone and let him ramble.

"He's changed," Taggart said. "I don't know if he's just got super
smart, but I can't follow half the things he talks about now. Maybe
he just forgot my language.

"He's always had that serious like goal-set mind and everything, but
he kind of seems like he has lost a bit of his personality because he
feels so strong about it," she added. "That's pretty much all he
thinks about. But, I think it's pretty cool. In a small town
everyone's like a little clone of their parents that graduated 20
years before they did. He actually doesn't really care about that,
and feels this strongly about an issue."

At home, Karimi felt near-constant anxiety. He had trouble sleeping.
He classified the feelings as depression, but never saw a doctor about them.

The problems persisted beyond his May 2007 graduation and, around
that time, he started drinking - heavily.

"I would drink every night because it would put me to sleep," Karimi
said. "It would drive out the bad thoughts. It would basically numb
me. So, I always had liquor or beer or something hidden in my room
and my parents had no idea. I'd go to work, come home, act normal or
whatever, people would go to bed and I'd go to bed and just watch
movies or whatever and drink."

His drinking increased during his freshman year at Iowa State
University, where he planned to major in management information systems.

Unhindered by parental oversight, Karimi adopted a "party boy facade"
that saw him drinking most nights.

A semester on the bottle burned him out. He gained what he calls
"alcoholic tendencies" and decided to try to stop drinking.

"I would start shaking if I wasn't drinking," Karimi said. "I would
feel better after a couple beers or a couple shots, until I even
started hiding it from my college friends. So I thought, this isn't
the path I wanted to go down."

In sobriety, he says, the jittery feelings and sleeplessness
returned. His appetite was gone. He lied to his parents about his
grades, which were declining.

He suspected, because of Internet research, that he had bipolar
disorder. The suspicion would not be confirmed until he visited a
psychologist two years later.

Karimi smoked marijuana "a few times" in high school, but didn't
enjoy it.

He didn't like the feeling of the marijuana high and, more than that,
he loathed the "stoner culture."

When friends asked him to smoke, he turned them down.

"I always thought that smoking cannabis makes you an idiot," Karimi
said. "All the people I knew who smoked (in high school) tried to act
like they were in a Cheech and Chong movie, and I didn't like that. I
still don't like some of the things about the stoner culture that
are portrayed."

Get him talking about it, and Karimi rants on about "douchebag high
school stoners" and "stupid hippies." He uses the latter as a
derogatory phrase for adults who carry on too much about recreational
use.

A turn of events in winter 2007 has come to define Karimi's young
existence:

An acquaintance reintroduced him to marijuana.

"I started smoking it nightly because it put me to sleep," Karimi
said.

Marijuana felt like a solution to his mental troubles, not the cause
of any problems; at least, that's the way he interpreted it. The drug
also helped him concentrate. It "leveled him out," he said, and his
grades went back up.

"If I smoke weed I can learn like you wouldn't believe," Karimi said.
"I can type like over 110 words per minute, I can read quickly. If I
can slow my brain down to absorb information, which is what marijuana
does (for me), I can learn at a rate that most people don't
understand. That sounds like bragging, but that's just how it is."

That's the experience that motivates Karimi's push to be allowed to
smoke while on probation.

"If it works for me and helps to level me out in my situation, then
why can't I discuss this with a doctor?" Karimi said.

Karimi's second semester was going smoothly until officers arrested
him for drug possession in April 2008. He had nearly four ounces of
marijuana in his dorm room.

The court proceedings lasted three months. On July 28, 2008, Karimi
pleaded guilty to a lesser possession charge. District Associate
Judge James B. Malloy sentenced him to one year of probation and a
one-year suspended jail term, which now hangs over his head as Story
County officials weigh whether to revoke his parole.

A subsequent theft conviction, in Warren County, could add four more
years of prison to the mix. That part of the story comes later.

Students who are convicted of first-offense marijuana possession in
the United States while receiving federal financial aid lose that aid
for one year following their conviction, according to an aid
eligibility handbook published on the federal Information for
Financial Aid Professionals Web site.

Now a convicted criminal, and without his financial aid, Karimi blew
off the final two weeks of finals and moved into an Indianola
apartment in July 2008.

He worked 60 or 80 hours a week between an Indianola gardening
company and the local Wal-Mart. He tried to stay off of marijuana.

"I had been working that much to try and go back to school to make it
up to my parents," he said. "I felt terrible, like I screwed up. I
felt like a criminal. And I started smoking marijuana again in the
fall when my depression got so bad I was having suicidal thoughts
for the first time since I got arrested."

The depression morphed into a plan: He would steal from his employer
and sell the merchandise to pay his way back to college.

The plan failed.

Indianola police arrested Karimi in December for stealing $6,300
worth of electronics equipment from Wal-Mart.

According to a police report, Officer Justin Keller and Sergeant Rob
Hawkins caught him with four packs of beer, half a pack of deli meats
and a half-drank bottle of Naked brand juice.

They took him back to his apartment, where they found video game
consoles, televisions, iPod music players and a global positioning
system.

"Karimi also stated that he had stolen two Nintendo Wii game systems
and sold them to friends," Keller wrote. "He advised that he has sold
several stolen items to other people over the past few months."

Karimi and his attorney scarcely contested the charges. He pleaded
guilty to one count of third-degree theft, an aggravated misdemeanor,
and bargained a felony theft charge down to a second aggravated
misdemeanor. He received a pair of two-year suspended prison terms,
along with two years' probation in Warren County and renewed
probation in Story County.

In addition, the court fined him $12,000, of which he owed about
$2,800 as of Dec. 8, 2009.

He moved back home to Milo, briefly, after the arrest. His mother,
Susan Karimi, had bailed him out of jail during the court
proceedings. But he soon argued with his mother and his father,
Saeed, over his continued marijuana usage.

Susan and Saeed Karimi declined to comment for this story, but did
send the Record-Herald more than 25 pages of news stories and medical
studies that linked marijuana usage with psychotic episodes,
increased instances of schizophrenia and exacerbation of depression
and anxiety.

"I said from day one that the laws were wrong and that cannabis was
good for me and that it helped me at Iowa State because my grades
went up when I started using," Karimi said. "They just saw it as
illegal, so out of concern for me they kicked me out hoping that I
would see the light. Instead, now I'm doing this."

"This," as Karimi mentioned, is his effort to forge himself into a
steadfast advocate for the medical use of marijuana in Iowa.

The advocacy began in April 2009, when Karimi scoped out the
screening of a documentary called "Waiting to Inhale," which studies
the movement to legalize medical marijuana.

During the screening at Drake University, Karimi met a woman who uses
marijuana to treat her fibromyalgia and a young man who uses the drug
to treat chronic pain from a car accident.

"Seeing these people, how they moved, and seeing them literally beg
to be allowed to have marijuana just broke my heart," Karimi said. "I
decided to get up and say what happened to me with my legal
situation. I said, 'My name is Jason Karimi, and marijuana has
ruined my life.' "

Iowa medical marijuana advocate Jimmy Morrison, a grant recipient of
the Marijuana Policy Project, met Karimi at the meeting.

The two became friends, and Morrison said in a Jan. 14 telephone
interview that he supports Karimi's right to make his own medical
decisions, although he has never advised Karimi on whether or not to
continue to use marijuana.

"I really believe it's an issue of individual choice or freedom,"
Morrison said. "I don't advocate one way or another, and I've never
pressured Jason ... It's more of a conversation that needs to be had
between his doctor and him about whether that's the best choice for
him, and right now he can't do that."

The speech at Drake University was Karimi's first public advocacy
effort, but it wouldn't be his last.

He drove to Mason City and Council Bluffs, where he spoke at the
Sept. 2 and Sept. 4 hearings of the Iowa Board of Pharmacy.

They were two of four public hearings held last year by pharmacy
board members, who are set to rule on Feb. 17 whether the drug should
be moved from schedule 1 - the highest level of control for drugs -
to schedule 2, which allows some medical use.

Karimi gave two speeches on Sept. 2, each lasting about 10
minutes.

Immediately following his first speech a board spokesperson, Terry
Witkowski, told attendees:

"A transcript of all comments that are received at today's hearing
will be reviewed by all seven members of the Iowa Board of Pharmacy.
Those members regret that none of them could be here today to hear
you in person."

Karimi was frustrated by the announcement. Now, four months later, he
just hopes the board heard him and everyone else before they made
their decision.

"Aspirin kills 5,000 people a year," Karimi said. "Marijuana kills
nobody. The only way I can think of marijuana killing you is if
someone drops a bale of marijuana on your head. And who stands under
a bale of marijuana? That's just a bad idea."

Mental health was the third most popular subject of conversation at
the pharmacy board hearings. Several people testified that marijuana
had helped relieve their symptoms of ADHD, depression and bipolar
disorder, according to Morrison.

After routine marijuana use, Karimi failed his first drug test in
June. He cut down on his intake. Depression persisted.

In July, he checked himself into Mercy Medical Center for a 24 hour
suicide watch. He says he argued with the doctor over his life
choices and called his parents to pick him up.

Shortly after the hospital visit, and for the first time in his life,
Karimi visited a psychologist - Dr. R. James Thorpe of the Center for
Interpersonal Effectiveness in Ankeny.

According to Karimi, Thorpe formally diagnosed him with bipolar
disorder during that appointment.

Thorpe did not return calls to confirm the diagnosis; however, Karimi
showed the Record-Herald a signed letter on the doctor's office
letterhead that said Karimi's symptoms were consistent with bipolar
disorder.

Marijuana's medical impact on bipolar disorder and other mental
illnesses is far from certain.

Patients are not advised to use illegal drugs as medication for
mental illness, and especially not as a means of self-medication,
said Margaret Stout, director of Iowa's branch of the National
Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

"I would question the benefits that he believes that he receives by
taking marijuana for his illness," said Stout, who has led the state
organization for 22 years. "Science has not proven marijuana to be a
positive thing in the treatment of bipolar illness."

Stout isn't a strictly anti-drug person. She would likely advocate
for marijuana usage if she had seen any studies that show benefits
for patients, she said.

The fact is, she hasn't seen any such studies.

"I have seen the results of people who have severe damage from the
use of some of those chemicals," Stout said of users of marijuana,
cocaine, methamphetamine and other illegal drugs. "The types of
marijuana that are out there today are far more dangerous than they
would have been many years ago because they are laced with other products."

A 2002 new story given to the Record-Herald by Susan Karimi,
published in the article database Medscape Medical News, cited a
1969-70 study of 50,087 males in Sweden, aged 18 to 20 years, which
showed that "use of cannabis increased the risk of schizophrenia by
30 percent."

A 2005 study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology was less
committal.

"There are some reports that people use cannabis for help in
alleviating mania and others report its use for relieving
depression," the authors found. "However, these reports are anecdotal
and no systematic research has ever been done to see if these effects
apply to the population in general. Additionally, there are reports
that indicate that cannabis can have a detrimental and potentially
causative role in the development of psychosis and paradoxically, can
induce mania."

At any rate, according to Karimi, marijuana worked for him - except
for the legal troubles.

After his theft conviction, he refused to attend substance abuse
treatment at the Mid-Eastern Council on Chemical Abuse and Broadlawns
Medical Center in Des Moines.

He failed drug tests in June and October. He admitted to "making a
bong that was going to used for smoking marijuana," according to a
parole violation report by probation officers Scott Thraen and Jeff
Schultz.

"If you want to see a rehabilitated man, I'm that person," Karimi
said. "The only thing I've done while on probation that's illegal is
use marijuana. And buy marijuana, and transport marijuana from the
place I purchased it to the place I used it ... it makes me feel
good, and it makes me feel normal, and it helps me."

During those months, Karimi lived in "about 10 different
places."

In court files, he registered addresses in Indianola, Ames, Norwalk,
Carlisle and Altoona, where he'd lived for about two months as of
Jan. 6.

Also during those months, spent in large part pouring over research
on the Internet, Karimi converted to the Rastafari movement, which
promotes ritual use of marijuana as a spiritual sacrament and is
considered a loosely knit religion, according to BBC News.

One evening in December 2009, Karimi requested that his probation be
revoked and that he be sent to prison.

He hesitated to share many details about the experiences that led to
this decision, which he said he later tried unsuccessfully to reverse.

The short version of the story, he said, was that several people
threatened his life. He owed at least one of those people money.
Another believed Karimi was an undercover police officer.

Meanwhile, Karimi was again suicidal. He was an on-again, off-again
marijuana user trying, simultaneously, to medicate himself and to
appease the courts.

"I was at wit's end," Karimi said.

Hence, Karimi came face-to-face with Tingle at the Jan. 5 probation
revocation hearing, at which time Karimi had decided to serve as his
own legal representation.

Karimi presented Tingle with a five page, single-spaced typewritten
report that gave his legal argument and some, but not all, of his
story detailed here.

"Your concerns would be better served by addressing the Legislature,"
Tingle told Karimi, and reminded him that Iowa had no exemptions for
medical marijuana use.

Karimi relented and signed up for a public defender. His probation
hearing in Warren County was postponed to Feb. 7; his Jan. 7 hearing
in Story County was postponed to Jan. 21.

At those hearings, if his defender allows it, Karimi plans to request
that marijuana be included in the list of possible prescriptions
available to any doctor that the court would assign him to see for
his illness.

He'd like that opportunity made available to others in Iowa,
too.

"I know a lot of people who are in wheelchairs, who are using canes,
who have multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, chronic pain, and this
just isn't right," Karimi said. "Why should I keep my mouth shut and
do what the courts say?"

The Iowa Pharmacy Board will rule on medical marijuana next month,
but Karimi may not be a free man at that time.

Morrison, the medical marijuana advocate, says there is little hope
that Karimi will stay out of prison.

Iowa doesn't have a medical necessity defense for marijuana users.
Even if the Legislature adopted such a law this year - Sen. Joe
Bolckom proposed one in the form of Senate File 293 - it would likely
apply only to people with chronic pain, and it would not have
retroactive effects for people with prior convictions.

"He's a good kid who's made mistakes," Morrison said. "He's young and
he has a future. He's not somebody who's going to let this destroy
him. Just like Nelson Mandela had 27 years of his life taken away in
prison, Jason's facing having five of his taken away."