IN WEED WE TRUST

Despite the Supreme Court's ruling, Barbara Elfstrom-and Oregon-are
not going back.

In her family's small Gresham apartment crammed with antiques,
52-year-old Barbara Elfstrom pours coffee while the soap opera
Guiding Light plays on a large TV.

Her hands shake so much that serving the brew is a daunting task,
sending droplets flying over the rim of the cup. The instability
stems from her various ailments, but it might as well be her mood:
She is angry and scared.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal cops do not have
to respect states' laws: Rather, they can arrest this mother, her
grower, and all others involved in the state's medical-marijuana
program-which was approved by 55 percent of voting Oregonians in 1998.

Elfstrom is not a leader or an activist. She has never been quoted in
any newspaper, and you won't find her name in any search on Google.
But Elfstrom, who has been smoking pot for more than 30 years and has
had a medical-marijuana card for two years to combat what she says
are bipolar mood swings, chronic pain and fibromyalgia, says, "I'm
not going down quietly." If they take away her medical pot, she is
"ready to go underground."

Then she dips into an antique, hermetically sealed jelly jar in which
she keeps a strain of fragrantly fruity weed called Blueberry
Northern Lights. She lights up a reddish glass pipe: "It's called
'The Carburetor,'" she says affectionately. "It was a birthday present."

Conversations with Elfstrom, law-enforcement officials, judges and
physicians, along with an analysis of existing data, suggest that the
pot genie is out of the bottle. Medical marijuana has helped to
legitimize pot culture in Oregon. Even the Supreme Court's recent
ruling will have little effect. With all the other pressing problems
out there, society seems to be passing pot prohibition by.

As Multnomah County Circuit Judge Doug Beckman puts it, "I think
there's a broader social acceptance for users of marijuana. And
gradually there's increasing public pressure, I think, to
decriminalize marijuana."

As government programs go, medical marijuana in Oregon has been a
striking success. Initially, it was thought that only a few hundred
people would request cards. As of last week, more than 10,500
Oregonians have licenses that allow them to possess and smoke pot.

"I am number 500, and it was expected we wouldn't go past that
number," says Madeline Martinez, president of the Oregon chapter of
the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "It was
never even a thought that it would be this successful."

There are those, of course, who say the huge participation rate is a
sign that the entire program is a scam. It does appear to be fairly
easy to secure a card. The accepted list of medical conditions one
needs to obtain a card includes everything from cancer (as of Jan. 1,
2005, listed by 253 applicants), glaucoma (215), to nausea (2,194),
persistent muscle spasms (3,054) and severe pain (9,111). (Many
patients list more than one malady.) The number of Oregon doctors who
have granted licenses now totals more than 1,700, a vast increase
from the early days, when one semi-retired osteopath, Phillip
Leveque, signed applications for nearly 4,000 cards. (The state
suspended his license in 2004, noting that he often did not examine
patients or keep medical records.)

Oregon law does not require doctors to write a prescription. Rather,
they fill out a form that states that the patient suffers from one of
the conditions that qualifies them for the program, and that
marijuana might help. Once approved, possessors of a card are allowed
to grow a limited amount of pot themselves, or name a provider, who
then is granted a card, too.

Some states have programs similar to Oregon's, while others are
stricter. In Vermont, the list of qualifying medical conditions is
much tighter. And in Nevada, applicants must pass a background check
to ensure they do not have a criminal conviction for dealing drugs.

"Given what states can do in this atmosphere of federal hostility, I
think Oregon has done a pretty good job," says Bruce Mirken,
spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project.

The issue settled by the U.S. Supreme Court last week was whether the
federal government could preempt states that had voted to allow
medical marijuana. A majority of justices ruled that thanks to its
constitutional authority over interstate commerce, the federal
government had the right to bust those who were participating in
medical pot programs. Interestingly, this ruling came from the
liberal side of the bench, including John Paul Stevens, David Souter,
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

As KINK-FM news director Sheila Hamilton quipped at a City Club event
last week, alluding also to federal opposition to Oregon's
physician-assisted suicide law, "Now we can't kill ourselves or get
stoned while we're terminally ill. That's like, so bogus."

The judges who voted in the minority on medical pot included some of
the court's most conservative members-Clarence Thomas and William
Rehnquist. They took a traditionally conservative states'-rights
point of view-that the federal government had no right to be mucking
around in the decisions made by individual states. In his dissent,
Thomas translated the majority's opinion: "By holding that Congress
may regulate activity that is neither interstate nor commerce under
the Interstate Commerce Clause, the Court abandons any attempt to
enforce the Constitution's limits on federal power."

Even the judges who ruled in the majority were sympathetic to the
cause of medicinal marijuana, opining that existing federal law was
anachronistic and that "despite a congressional finding to the
contrary, marijuana does have valid therapeutic purposes." In fact,
the Court encouraged Congress to step in and change federal law in a
way that would be friendlier to medical marijuana. Good timing: A
House vote was scheduled as early as this Tuesday, June 14, on a
congressional bill that would block federal enforcement actions
against qualified patients in states with medical pot laws.

Regardless, the Court's ruling allowing federal enforcement is
unlikely to have much practical effect.

After the ruling came out last week, state law-enforcement officials
said it merely echoed what they'd believed all along. But they are
sworn to uphold state law, so while the medical pot program
temporarily suspended issuing new cards, it is likely to resume soon.
Ken Magee, who is the Oregon spokesperson for the federal Drug
Enforcement Administration, essentially told WW that bona fide
medical-marijuana patients don't need to panic. Magee says his agency
has not requested the list of cardholders. As for whether it will in
the future, he declined to say but did not make it sound likely.

"We do not target sick and dying patients," he said. "We do advocate
research for marijuana to determine if it does have medicinal value."

This rather mellow-sounding position may simply be due to his
superiors' realization that pot-medical and otherwise-appears to be
here to stay.

Peruse the magazine section of the Jantzen Beach Barnes & Noble and
you will find both High Times and Cannabis Culture magazines for
sale. The Fossil store in Lloyd Center sells a T-shirt reading
"Oh-so-hi-o." Vans sneakers sell a line with a pot leaf on the sole
of one of them. Go into a conservative-minded truck stop outside St.
Helens and you will find marijuana-leaf logos accompanying the usual
right-wing bumper stickers and fantastical female silhouettes.

Some of the ways marijuana turns up would have been unthinkable
several years ago. Turn on your TV and on That '70s Show you will see
one of its staple gags-the teenage kids lighting up and saying
really, really deep things-in just about every episode. During a tour
of the Oregon Council for Hispanic Advancement's alternative high
school last year in downtown Portland, the kids were unloading crates
of hot sauce made by Cheech Marin of Cheech and Chong fame-the same
man who is now a spokesman for Target.

The issue of medical marijuana has gone so mainstream that the Pho's
in Portland restaurant on Northeast 82nd Avenue, soon to be renamed
the One World Restaurant and Tea House, is building a special room
where customers who show their medical marijuana cards can go to
light up. It is unclear how the business's plans will be affected by
the recent Supreme Court ruling, if at all. A woman who answered the
phone Monday confirmed that the plans are still underway.

While it's difficult to prove, it does seem as though the acceptance
of pot in Oregon remains greater than elsewhere in the country.
Oregon is the only state in the country where a state chapter of
NORML hosts an annual Medical Cannabis Awards contest and trade show,
where the latest in technology for extraction of THC (the main active
chemical in marijuana) is displayed and the best buds rated (event
organizers normally set up a discreet room nearby where patients can light up).

Oregon also is one of the largest marijuana-growing states in the
nation. In February of this year, the federal Department of Justice
placed Oregon among the top six states in outdoor cultivation-giving
a special nod to Jackson, Josephine, Klamath and Umatilla counties.
That does not include the flood of high-quality B.C. bud pouring in
from Canada.

Of course, the fact that a lot of pot is grown here does not
automatically mean a lot of pot is smoked here. But other data
suggests that is true. Oregonians might be surprised to know that,
according to a federal survey done in 2002-2003, almost 9 percent of
all Oregonians aged 12 or over had smoked pot in the past month, as
compared with a 6.2 percent average nationwide. Put another way,
Oregonians were 43 percent more likely to have smoked weed in the
last month than the average American.

Even if you don't trust statistics, anecdotally, cops say there's
more weed out there than ever. And entrepreneurs serving marijuana
users, legal and otherwise, say business has been booming.

At Up in Smoke in North Portland, a shop that sells tobacco and other
apparatus, employee Larry McMurphy says he has seen tremendous growth
over the past five years. His customers are very diverse and wear
anything from "three-piece suits to patches."

Mark Herer, owner of a Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard
smoking-paraphernalia shop called Third Eye (and son of Jack Herer,
author of the pro-legalization bible The Emperor Wears No Clothes),
displays hundreds of water pipes on shelves and in cases, and says
his sales have gone up five-fold in the past five years. In the span
of a half-hour interview, he makes at least eight sales. And it's not
just him: "Smoke shops are popping up everywhere," he says.

Pollster Tim Hibbitts says that not only does medical marijuana enjoy
wide support among Oregonians, he suspects that the younger crowd is
more open to complete legalization than in the past. Times have
changed, he says: "I doubt if you would have gotten passage of a
medical-marijuana initiative 20 years ago."

But perhaps the most striking sign of weed's acceptance is that
people who years ago were unwilling to talk about marijuana laws now
do so without much prodding.

There may be no one tougher on crime in Oregon than Steve Doell, the
hardcore conservative leader of Crime Victims United and the prime
mover behind Measure 11, the state's minimum-sentencing law. He says
he smoked pot in college and recalls, "As far as I was concerned, it
was a great sleeping pill. It put me out." And though he's anti-drugs
now, "I think it's probably a waste of time to use law enforcement to
chase down people who have small amounts of marijuana for personal
use," he says. "You certainly don't hear about many potheads going
out and doing violent crime." As for federal laws on pot, he says, if
the horror stories he hears about federal mandatory minimums on
marijuana are true, "there's something wrong there."

Others feel even the penalties for illegal growers may be too stiff.
"We make very serious life changes for people, and I'm not sure it's
the right thing," says Multnomah County Circuit Judge Nely Johnson.

Currently, if you are busted with an ounce or less of marijuana in
Portland, you face only a misdemeanor violation-a $500 ticket. Only
for quantities above that do you face a potential felony, but the
quantities must be very large to get any jail time. And you can get
your first felony erased by signing up for drug treatment through
Multnomah's drug court, called STOP.

Judge Beckman, former head of the STOP court, believes weed should be
further decriminalized. He says society's acceptance of marijuana
use-medical or otherwise-keeps growing, and the criminal-justice
system has not kept pace-especially in federal courts, which he calls
"draconian."

"My feeling is that the criminal-justice system is not really solving
the problem," he says, adding that the focus should be on treatment,
not incarcerations.

Beckman's and Johnson's concerns may be legitimate, but the fact is
that the criminal-justice system in Portland has substantially
already decriminalized pot, simply by choosing to prosecute it less.

While there seems to be more pot and more pot smokers-legal and
illegal-than ever, the "war on pot," once a major source of
controversy in Portland (see "Knock, Knock, You're Busted," WW, March
10, 1999), has virtually ceased. According to the Portland Police
Bureau, the number of arrests for marijuana has dropped by 45 percent
in the past five years. The number of pot plants seized annually by
Portland drug cops-which hit its peak at more than 17,000 a decade
ago-is now down to just a tenth of that, at 1,725.

A big reason for this shift in priorities is the state's
medical-marijuana law, police say. In Portland at least, the laws on
the books regarding marijuana in Oregon appear to be joining the many
other laws already gathering dust. As Multnomah County Circuit Judge
Ed Jones puts it, "We're not doing much about hunting in cemeteries
either-but we've got a law about it."

Perhaps the person the most keenly aware of marijuana enforcement in
Portland is the county's head drug prosecutor, Mark McDonnell, a
soft-spoken senior deputy district attorney who says he is no
anti-pot zealot. "I smoked pot when I was a kid, I know what it's all
about," he says. "And let's face it, it doesn't do you a whole lot of
good to sit around and smoke pot all the time, which is what a lot of
these people are doing."

His unit is struggling with dangerous drugs like meth and heroin, as
well as a staffing shortage due to budget cuts. That, combined with
the medical-marijuana program, is making marijuana laws "impossible
to enforce," he says. When officers "investigate it, charge it, go
all the way to trial and the guy claims he has an affirmative
[medical-marijuana] defense...the case falls apart," says McDonnell.
"We can't afford that."

As a result, "cops are essentially throwing up their hands," he says.
"I don't even hardly pay attention to it anymore. [Marijuana
enforcement has] become a nuisance.... Judges don't care. Generally
speaking, juries don't care."

Does the dramatic drop in arrests mean there's less pot out there?
"Hell, no," says McDonnell. The arrests now are driven by neighbor
complaints or if the person violates what McDonnell calls "'the pig
rule'-it's obvious that they are being a pig about it."

Portland Police Sgt. Brian Schmautz, who spent years as the bureau's
top pot cop, has kept an eye on how the drug has gradually gained
acceptance in popular culture. Speaking for himself, not his
employer, Schmautz says medical-marijuana proponents have
successfully changed the terms of the debate: "I think anytime you
say that something has medicinal value or that people are helped by
it, there's less stigma attached to it." And in the political climate
in Portland, if you question the medicinal value of pot, he says,
"you're not a caring person."

Schmautz is avowedly anti-drug, saying he has seen marijuana abuse
and addiction ruin lives. But even some of the contradictions he sees
in the program seem almost to endorse a stronger one. "I don't quite
understand how if someone says this is great medicine, then why not
tax it and distribute it like any other medicine?," he says. "You're
allowing people to self-medicate as much as they want to, as often as
they want to. I think we allow people to be less than what they could
be because of this political morass."

Morass it may be, but a newly legitimized one: Earlier this year, the
state Department of Human Services realized that it could raid the
fund created by medical pot fees to help cover budget holes
elsewhere. Providing perhaps the biggest sign yet that marijuana has
gone mainstream, last month the state House of Representatives voted
49-10 to take $900,000 of the available $1.1 million in pot license
money for the general fund. Bureaucrats are already talking about
raising the $55-per-card annual fee. Could pot be the next lottery?

Elfstrom, for her part, says she started smoking pot at age 17, after
her first suicide attempt, and before she was diagnosed as bipolar.
Once she was diagnosed, she kept using it, since pharmaceuticals were
not an option. Marijuana "made me happy," she says. "I can't take
lithium; I have a terrible reaction to it." Elfstrom says the weed
has cut her reliance on the morphine and Percocet she gets through
Kaiser Permanente for her chronic pain. She cut back from 75
milligrams of morphine to 25 milligrams per day, and she now consumes
only 150 Percocet pills per month, down from 280. She can see the
increase in pot's public acceptance even in her own family, where her
mother was very critical of her smoking.

"But when it became legal, she had no problem with me smoking it,"
says Elfstrom. "She doesn't like me to smoke it in the house, but she
does let me smoke it at her house-I go out in the garage. And that's
a big deal for a 73-year-old woman who was dead set against it."

News intern Robert Hamrick contributed reporting for this article.