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."