AILING WOMAN TICKETED AFTER POLICE FIND POT

Robin Prosser has lost her house, her dog, her cat and her prized
shiny-black Kawai grand piano over being sick for more than a decade
and trying to use marijuana as medicine.

On May 10, she tried to lose her life.

On Thursday afternoon, she told Municipal Court Judge Don Louden she'd
like more time to decide how to plead to charges of possessing
dangerous drugs and drug paraphernalia.

Missoula police discovered the two pipes and a small amount of
marijuana in her dresser drawer after Prosser's psychologist called
them to her apartment on West Broadway. Paul Bach, who has treated her
for six years, received a suicide e-mail from Prosser when he arrived
at his office Monday, May 10, at 8 a.m. She had written it the night
before.

"I fully intended to be dead the next day," Prosser said Thursday
after her court appearance.

"I couldn't get the medicine I needed," she said. "So I decided I'd
rather die than live with that pain."

Prosser is 47 and moved to Missoula 11 years ago to study composition
in the University of Montana's music department. She formerly lived in
Chicago, where she worked as a systems analyst with an insurance firm.
She has lived with an immunosuppressive disorder that's related to
lupus since she was 28. She is allergic to narcotic prescription
drugs. She said the only thing that has relieved her bone pain, muscle
spasticity, irritable bowel, spinal pain, constant migraines and other
symptoms is marijuana, which she smokes.

But it's illegal. So when police looked in her dresser drawers to find
out what pills she may have taken that Sunday night and found the
pipes and the tiny bit of pot, they took them. She received the
tickets in the mail last Wednesday.

"I'm sick about it," she said. "I don't feel that I'm a criminal. I
have a clean record."

Louden gave her until June 11 to reappear and enter a plea. He told
her that she could receive up to a year in jail. She would have to
take a drug rehabilitation course.

"I'm terrified," Prosser said. "Terrified. I can't imagine if they
imposed the maximum sentence."

Prosser thinks she'll plead not guilty. But she has yet to find a
lawyer who will help her. She has no money.

"Pleading guilty is not an option," she said.

Missoula Police Capt. Marty Ludemann said that because Prosser
possessed illegal drugs, she had to be charged with that.

"It has nothing to do with her illness," he said.

"I think the reason why we charged her is Montana does not allow the
medical use of marijuana," he said.

What the case will turn on, he said, is whether the pipes and
container would be considered to be in "plain view" of the police officers.

"That's going to be a question," he said. "The judge may say that's
not allowed. He's the final word on it."

Bach, a clinical psychologist, said Prosser functions very well
cognitively and emotionally and seems unaffected in those areas by the
marijuana use. It makes a great difference for her physically by
relieving her pain, he said.

"She benefits from it greatly," he said. "In the years I have followed
her, I think I have recognized when she has adequate cannabis supply
and when she does not."

This was Prosser's second dry spell of being unable to obtain
marijuana, she said. When Bach arrived at her apartment, she was in
bed and nearly unconscious, he said. She had taken sleeping pills she
ordered over the Internet.

"This was a serious suicide attempt, no question," he
said.

Prosser has lived on Social Security disability payments for 14 years.
Two years ago, she fasted for more than a month in a hunger strike to
plead for the legal medicinal use of marijuana.

Cannabis was used for various ailments for at least 4,000 years but
became illegal in the United States in 1937.

Paul Befumo, who's the spokesman for the Medical Marijuana Policy
Project of Montana, the organization supporting an initiative to
legalize the medical use of marijuana on the November ballot, said
Prosser's is just the kind of situation the initiative is meant to
address.

"It seems counterproductive and cruel to do this to people who are
suffering," he said.

Prosser said she considers Missoula home. Her daughter attends the
University of Montana. But she may have to move somewhere where the
laws are different. Without marijuana, she said, she ends up in the
hospital with untreatable pain.

"Quality of life is nonexistent," she said.