ACTIVIST LEPP BEGINS FAST IN PROTEST

UPPER LAKE -- Eddy Lepp, awaiting federal prosecution for growing
marijuana, has reportedly begun a fast to protest the government's
case against him.

Lepp, free on bail after being arrested last August by officials of
the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), was quoted in an e-mail
saying that he intends to fast "until the charges are dropped and the
government stops targeting me and my family.

"For me this is both a spiritual and political action," Lepp stated.

Lepp openly grew more than 30,000 marijuana plants on his 40-acre
Upper Lake property before the DEA, aided by local law enforcement
officials, destroyed it while placing him under arrest in mid-August.

The plants were grown at Eddy's Medicinal Gardens, the name that Lepp,
who identifies himself as a Rastafarian minister, calls his property.

The e-mail regarding Lepp's plans to fast said that he had stepped
down from his ministerial post to focus on his pending trial in San
Francisco and to assist with a program of intervention of gangs in
south central Los Angeles.

Lepp charges that his freedom of religion has been violated by the
DEA's action. He has maintained that state Proposition 215, a law
permitting cultivation and use of medical marijuana in California,
takes constitutional precedence over the federal laws he is accused of
breaking.

Additionally, he has continuously insisted that the marijuana grown on
his property belonged not to him but to sick and terminally ill
patients, who paid for its planting and cultivation.

Lepp's attorney Dennis Roberts, who said he was unaware of his
client's fast, plans to file motions in federal court preliminary to
his trial on Feb. 7.