TINY POT PROTAGONIST BEAT ASHCROFT IN COURT

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. -- What do you do when you sue U.S. Attorney General
John Ashcroft and win? Fifty-one-year-old Valerie Corral, a sinewy
5-foot-tall great-granddaughter of Italian immigrants, throws back her
head, laughing, her hands reaching to the clouds, hips wiggling, feet stomping.

"It's my happy dance!" she says, throwing her arms around her husband, Mike.

She has also planted an acre of marijuana.

The decision that lets the crop remain is just one round in a long legal
battle.

Last month, a federal judge in San Jose issued a preliminary injunction
banning the Justice Department, including the Drug Enforcement
Administration, from interfering with the Corrals' pot garden, set above an
ocean bluff near Davenport, about an hour south of San Francisco. The
injunction gives the judge time to reconsider his earlier decision to allow
the garden to be uprooted.

Still, the Corrals call the injunction a victory.

They share their harvest through the first legally recognized, nonprofit
medical marijuana club in America, which they founded in 1993. The club has
about 250 seriously ill members who have prescriptions from their doctors
to use marijuana to alleviate their suffering, increase their appetites and
control their seizures. The marijuana is free.

The San Jose ruling is one of a number challenging federal restrictions on
medical marijuana, which has consistently won support in national opinion
polls since 1995 but has had a mixed record in state ballot measures.

This summer, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide whether to hear
another case that could undo or affirm the Corrals' right to grow pot --
granted by state and local regulations, but denied by federal law. A second
case in federal court in San Francisco -- in which other medicinal-use
growers seek to reclaim seized marijuana -- could also affect the couple.

The Justice Department refused comment.

For now, the Corrals are the only people in the United States growing
marijuana in their back yard backed by state law, a local ordinance and a
federal judge's injunction. And Valerie Corral has become a heroine to
proponents of medical marijuana.

"This could be the moment of the beginning of the end of this insane war
against the sick," said Bruce Mirken of the Washington D.C.-based advocacy
group Marijuana Policy Project. "And while the DEA and the Justice
Department characterize Valerie as a common drug dealer, all you have to do
is spend two minutes with her to know that's a lie."

During the past three decades, while sharing marijuana with sick people,
Corral has watched -- and in many cases held -- 140 friends, ranging in age
from 7 to 96, as they died of cancer, AIDS and other illnesses.

"It is the greatest honor to be asked by a person who is dying to sit with
them," she said.

Reflection on those deaths has given her strength, she said -- while
battling the government, when federal agents pointed a rifle at her head,
and when her motives have been called into question.

"John Ashcroft is not someone I would have chosen to tangle with, but I
think of him, and George Bush, as lost souls," she said. "When I look at
them, I think about how they are just people, ... and that makes them less
fearsome. Ultimately we all make the same journey, and ultimately I hope
they make theirs in peace."

In fact, Corral's compassion is grudgingly respected at the DEA's San
Francisco office.

"I'm personally impressed with her desire to help deathly ill people," said
spokesman Richard Meyer. "It's just that she makes it look like the way to
help sick and dying people is to give them marijuana. And that's not the case.

"There's hundreds of ways to help these people. The DEA has a lot of
compassion for those people who are sick and dying, but I think there are
many, many ways to help them without giving them marijuana."

At DEA headquarters, authorities said the issue has nothing to do with
Valerie Corral or compassion.

"This may be personal to her, but it's not personal to the DEA," said the
agency's Will Glaspy in Washington, D.C. "The DEA's job is to enforce the
Controlled Substance Act. Congress passed the laws and charged us with
enforcing them. She is attempting to use the court system to get what she
wants."

Valerie Corral's path to becoming a medical marijuana advocate began 31
years ago, the day a small airplane swooped low and buzzed a Volkswagen she
was riding in through the Nevada desert. The car went out of control and
was sent skidding, rolling and bouncing 365 feet through the dust, brush
and rocks.

Corral's slight body was flung against the roof and doors, causing brain
damage, epilepsy, and a lifetime of staggering migraines. She took
prescription drugs but still suffered convulsions, shaking and grand mal
seizures.

Then one day, Mike handed her a medical journal article that showed
marijuana controlled seizures in mice. Since then, for 30 years, Valerie
Corral says she has maintained a steady level of marijuana in her system.

Her legal challenges began in 1992, when the local sheriff arrested her for
growing five marijuana plants. With Mike, she challenged the law, using the
defense of necessity.

Prosecutors dismissed the case, saying they didn't think they could win
before a sympathetic jury in liberal Santa Cruz. When the sheriff arrested
the Corrals again in 1993, the district attorney said he had no intention
of ever prosecuting them and told police to leave them alone.

A few years later, the Corrals helped draft California's landmark
Compassionate Use Act, approved by voters in 1996, that allows patients
with a doctor's recommendation to use marijuana. Similar laws in Alaska,
Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon and Washington allow the infirm to
receive, possess, grow or smoke marijuana for medical purposes without fear
of state prosecution.

But the law did not provide complete protection from arrest.

While local authorities worked with the Corrals to protect them against
theft and coordinate distribution, federal agents continued to assert that
growing, using and distributing marijuana was illegal. To provide legal
protection, the city of Santa Cruz deputized the Corrals in 2000 to
function as medical marijuana providers.

But in September 2002, federal agents raided the Corrals' farm -- just
weeks before their annual harvest -- taking the couple to jail and pulling
up more than 150 plants.

The Corrals were never charged, but the raid prompted them to begin a legal
challenge to the federal ban, aided by a team of attorneys including
University of Santa Clara law professor Gerald Uelmen and advocates at the
Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit Washington D.C.-based organization.

This is the case in which the San Jose judge recently ruled in their favor.

"Representing Valerie Corral, for me, is like representing Mother Teresa,"
said Uelmen, a constitutional law expert, calling her "one of the most
compassionate people I've ever met."

And one who has led a movement to a new high.