RON PAUL FINDS SUPPORTERS AMONG MEDICAL MARIJUANA ADVOCATES

While traditional Republicans were meeting at Clare's Doherty Hotel,
a volunteer for presidential hopeful Ron Paul was finding a largely
receptive audience a block away before a very non-traditional audience.

"Conservative government, smaller government, less intrusive
government," Paul volunteer Race Williams told members of the Clare
County Compassion Club. "That's what we need."

The compassion club is a group of medical marijuana patients,
caregivers and supporters. They meet twice a month at the Pere
Marquette District Library in Clare to discuss the issue and offer
insight and support.

"He is not saying he'll legalize drugs," Race told the approximately
50 people gathered for the meeting. But the Republican Texas
representative and one-time Libertarian Party candidate for president
is highly skeptical of the long-time "war on drugs."

"The drug war, prohibition, it's clear that doesn't work," Williams
told the patients and caregivers.

Michigan voters approved the limited cultivation and use of medical
marijuana under the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act, passed in 2008.
But Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette who was the keynote
speaker for the weekend's 4th District Republican Roundup at the
Doherty has made strict enforcement of the act one of his priorities.

Many of the medical marijuana supporters said the enforcement is too
strict, and oversteps boundaries they say should govern law enforcement.

"Bill Schuette's driving me nuts," said patient Todd Billman of
Roscommon. The law is "being used to persecute us," Billman said.

Schuette, in an attorney general's opinion released last year, noted
that possession of any amount of marijuana is illegal under federal
law, and that the Michigan Public Health Code still makes possession
or cultivation illegal. The Michigan Medical Marihuana Act doesn't
legalize the drug, but is designed to prevent prosecution of
registered patients and caregivers, who may grow a limited amount of
the drug for their patients.

But Race said Paul still supported the right of states to permit
medical marijuana.

"If there's no federal prohibition, there's no federal law for Bill
Schuette to use as a crutch," Race said.

Not all the club members were ready to fall in line behind Paul's
Libertarian, laissez-faire, hands-off policy proposals. Bumper
stickers supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement were being sold,
and at least one member took strong issue with Paul's stands on
abortion and climate change.

But others were very supportive.

"I want to save the soul of America before it's too late," said one
patient, a gray-bearded, heavyset man in Dickies overalls and a
hunter orange cap. He didn't want to give his name.

Paul finished a close third in the Iowa caucuses last week, and
several recent surveys show him in second place in Tuesday's New
Hampshire primary. Michigan's presidential primary is Feb. 28.