USER OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA SAYS SHE'LL CONTINUE TO FIGHT

OAKLAND, Calif. -Of course she would never stop using marijuana, Angel
Raich told reporters over and over again. "If I stopped," she said, "I
would die."

Raich's belief that medical cannabis keeps her alive is what spurred her to
fight the federal government's ban on marijuana. So on Monday, she was
disappointed -- "a little in shock" -- that the Supreme Court had ruled
that the government can still ban possession of marijuana even in states
that have legalized its medical use. But she will press on, she said, to
change federal law.

"We have a lot of fight left," she said as she was whisked away from a news
conference on the steps of Oakland City Hall to her house, where a camera
crew was waiting for her. She had back-to-back interviews all day, taking
breaks to ingest marijuana through a pipe or vaporizer every two hours or so.

She told reporters during a morning telephone conference that she had taken
medical marijuana before and during the meeting. "I don't like using it,"
she said, adding: "It doesn't make me high."

Instead, for Raich, 39, a mother of two teenagers who says she has been
suffering from a litany of disabling ailments since she was a teenager
herself, medical cannabis has worked where scores of other prescribed drugs
have failed. Marijuana makes her hungry, she said, which fights a wasting
syndrome that would otherwise steal her appetite. It relieves pain, she
said, from progressive scoliosis, endometriosis and tumors in her uterus.
Raich even believes it has something to do with arresting the growth of an
inoperable brain tumor.

She is convinced that her use of medical marijuana, which began in 1997
after she had been using a wheelchair for two years, made her strong enough
to stand up and learn to walk again. She said doctors could find no other
explanation.

The drug that she says soothes her has also made her an activist. In 2002,
with the help of her husband, Robert Raich, a lawyer she met when he was
defending medical cannabis clubs in Oakland, Raich and Diane Monson of
Oroville, Calif., another medical marijuana user, sued then-Attorney
General John D. Ashcroft to stop federal raids on patients who use medical
marijuana and their growers. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit
ruled in their favor, and the government appealed to the Supreme Court.

Monson, 47, an accountant who has a degenerative spine disorder, had her
home raided by federal drug agents in 2002 because she was growing six
marijuana plants on her patio. She could not be reached on Monday to comment.

Raich, who has been anxiously awaiting the high court's decision, made sure
she was available. Two months ago, she said, she was told that her cervix
was covered with precancerous cells. She waited until the Supreme Court
decision to schedule an operation to remove the cells, she said. After
that, she said, she is to undergo a hysterectomy.

She said she is trying to look on the bright side of the Supreme Court
decision. The timing, she said, was perfect, just before the House is to
vote on an amendment next week that would end government raids of medical
marijuana patients.

She said she plans to go to Washington in two weeks to lobby. But she also
said that all this activity does nothing to help her health. On busy days,
she said, "I don't get enough medicine. I'm constantly playing catch-up.
It's really hard on my body, on my mental state. When the day is over and
all the media is gone, I'm probably going to end up crying."