AN RX REVOLUTION

In Lake Forest, deepest Orange County, smack in the middle of a numbing
expanse of gated, landscaped subdivisions and chain store--dotted shopping
"plazas," two improbable revolutionaries are practicing medicine in a
nondescript, one-story, gray building.

Nothing on the office door but the names Dr. Philip A. Denney and Dr.
Robert E. Sullivan. When you've just set up shop as the only physicians for
hundreds of miles who specialize in medical recommendations for marijuana
use, you don't want to court any more trouble than your mere existence
already guarantees.

Inside are four equally plain-wrap rooms.

Two patients wait for appointments, middle-aged white guys, dressed
casually but well, clutching medical records.

You could yawn with the ordinariness of it all, except that in the world of
medical cannabis, nothing is ordinary. This work is simultaneously
cutting-edge, radical, humanitarian and possibly professionally suicidal.

"I do it because morally it's the right thing," says Denney. He's 55, a USC
medical-school graduate, with silver hair and beard -- slap 50 pounds
around his middle and he'd make a credible Santa Claus. "Cannabis has been
used medically for thousands of years.

For 60 years, our government has been lying to us about it, and patients
are being sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. It's
unconscionable."

After years as a Northern California family practitioner and ER doc, Denney
went into a cannabis-approval practice in 1999. "I was intrigued by the
politics and science -- mostly the science." Cannabis, unpatented, easily
grown, a people's remedy if ever there was one, has been shown in studies
to reduce eye pressure in glaucoma patients, lessen chemotherapy-induced
nausea, improve appetite, relieve some multiple-sclerosis symptoms and ease
pain. Nobody's yet reported a death from overdose.

Eventually, struck by the number of patients who were coming all the way
from Southern California to see him, he recruited his former colleague,
Sullivan, and headed south to set up a practice that he hopes to hand over
eventually to a local doctor.

Patients seeking medical marijuana, says Denney, "come in every ethnicity,
professionals, blue-collar workers.

I've seen police officers. I had a judge sit in my chair." The vast
majority suffer from some kind of chronic pain, neurological problems
including migraines, and gastrointestinal disorders that they've
successfully treated with pot on their own for years.

Then there are "the ones in chains and tattoos who say, 'I need marijuana
because . . . um . . . oh yeah, I can't sleep.'" Denney sends them on their
way.

It's been almost eight years since California voters approved medical use
of marijuana with a doctor's approval.

Last year the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals
ruling that doctors had the right to advise sick patients of the benefits
of pot; then the 9th Circuit ruled that medical users who grew their own
couldn't be prosecuted. But under federal law, marijuana use for any reason
remains illegal -- a Class I substance, just like heroin and crack.
Patient-users are still being busted, and doctors are still coming under
investigation by the California Medical Board. (Denney's two Southern
California predecessors were put out of business.)

Why has Denney stayed out of trouble? "I practice good medicine," he says.
"I perform thorough exams.

I review records and document my findings.

Law enforcement, including the medical board, are like jackals.

They go after the weak." Still, there's a surreal side to what he does. He
can recommend that patients use cannabis, but not tell them where to get
it. Some of his patients are longtime user-advocate-activists. Andy Kinnon,
41, who's already spoken to several reporters, lays it out almost proudly:
"I choose to use cannabis! -- I smoke it, I eat it, I vaporize it." But
most are like the two men in the waiting room, who quietly take their
turns, then scurry out without talking to anyone, including each other --
upstanding workadaddies and soccer moms who know what works for them but
whose kids get lectured in school on the evils of drugs, and who're well
aware of the stakes in going public. "They're not interested in being
radical," says Denney. "They just want a piece of paper saying they're not
criminals.

"In a perfect world, I wouldn't be doing this," Denney adds. "In a perfect
world, patients would get medical cannabis approvals written by a family
doctor, and I would be home in my garden, growing tomatoes."