TOUTLE WOMAN RALLIES FOR MEDICAL POT

Deloris Pooley of Toutle used to campaign against drug abuse.

Now, as a medical marijuana user, she says it's wrong to punish her husband
for picking up her medicine. "I've worked in law enforcement," said Pooley,
who says she is a former corrections officer in Oregon. "I've been a part
of D.A.R.E. I am anti-drug abuse. But all I know is, it (marijuana) gives
me my life back. I can get out of bed and talk."

She's still against wrongful use of any kind of drug, said Pooley, a 1975
graduate of Naselle High School.

She said that the small amount she smokes -- half a "very skinny" marijuana
cigarette every two hours to control seizures and chronic pain brought on
by a severe beating to the head in 1998 -- is careful medical use. Before
she began using cannabis earlier this year, she was confined to bed for
four years, she said.

Pooley, 48, who has a medical card authorizing her to legally possess a
small amount of marijuana for personal use, isn't in trouble with the law.
But her husband of two years, Russell Conover, spent 24 hours in jail this
week for possessing 6.6 grams that he picked up for her.

That's wrong, she said. She spent all day Tuesday at the Hall of Justice
parking lot in the bed of her pickup, surrounded by protest signs,
advocating for change in the state's murky medical marijuana law.

In 1998, Washington voters passed Initiative 692, which allows medical
marijuana patients to possess a 60-day supply of pot but doesn't give
provisions for how to obtain it in the first place. It is still illegal to
buy or sell.

And it's illegal for non-patients such as Conover to possess the drug.
Possession of less than 40 grams is a misdemeanor; more than 40 grams is a
felony.

Pooley said that Conover picked up 6.6 grams of marijuana for her at a free
co-op and was headed home with it when Cowlitz County sheriff's deputies
arrested him last spring. She said Conover doesn't smoke it.

The problem for law enforcement, Sheriff's Capt. Mark Nelson said, is that
officers can't take it for granted or accept an arrested person's word that
a drug isn't theirs.

"The law does not allow for someone else to purchase or possess marijuana
for you," Nelson said.

Pooley wants to see the laws changed to protect patients and their
caregivers from prosecution.

"It's not just me I'm fighting for," she said.

Pooley is walking a path that others have walked before -- unsuccessfully.
Two California women who use marijuana to ease pain brought their case
before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In June the justices ruled 6-3 that medical marijuana patients can be
prosecuted for violating federal drug laws. The ruling did not strike down
Washington's law or similar laws in nine other states, including Oregon.

Pooley said she never smoked pot recreationally.

"I tried it back when I was 20 and I did not like it. I liked my brain,"
she said. "This time it gave me my brain back."

Pooley said "a brutal, brutal beating" by her ex-husband left her with a
sleep disorder, convulsions, nerve damage, restless leg syndrome, constant
headaches and no appetite.

After her doctor recommended marijuana about a year and a half ago, she
took pills but they were "too strong." The smokable form of the drug, which
she began getting from the co-op earlier this year, works for her, she said.

"That's when I started really healing," she said. "I got stronger. ... I'm
learning what triggers convulsions. I only have a few a week, compared to
40 a day. Every time I get up, I'm thrilled."