OAKLAND'S 'GANJA GURU' SUES FOR GREEN

SAN FRANCISCO - Perhaps only here could someone go to court to enforce the
terms of a marijuana deal gone bad.

Ed Rosenthal, the Oakland "Guru of Ganja" who was convicted but avoided
prison time on federal marijuana charges last year, was back in court
Monday, but this time of his own volition.

He was in small claims court in his lawsuit against Bob Martin, a man who
has been involved with several of San Francisco's medical marijuana
dispensaries.

At issue is just how much protection the state's medical marijuana law
affords marijuana providers -- marijuana costs money to produce, and if
dispensaries must pay providers for plants, does the law ensure those
payments will be made in good faith?

Rosenthal claims Martin a few years ago wrote him several checks for
marijuana "clones" -- plants grown from cuttings of other plants -- that he
created and delivered to the Harm Reduction Center, a dispensary on Sixth
Street. These checks bounced, and Rosenthal now wants his money.

Rosenthal provided the checks Monday to San Francisco Superior Court
Commissioner Catherine A.S. Lyons.

He also gave her a transcript of testimony Martin gave at Rosenthal's
federal trial last year, in which Rosenthal claims Martin said he never
intended to pay Rosenthal for the plants.

Martin told Lyons he doesn't own the Harm Reduction Center and wasn't
present when Rosenthal delivered the plants; Lyons, however, noted aloud
that Martin signed the bad checks.

Martin said he worked at the dispensary as a volunteer, and that the
transaction with Rosenthal was interrupted in February 2002 by a Drug
Enforcement Administration raid in which plants were seized from the
dispensary and Rosenthal's Oakland growing facility, and in which Rosenthal
and others were arrested.

Martin made another argument: "If I was forced to pay those checks, your
honor, I'd be committing a federal crime ... I'd be paying for marijuana,
which is a federal offense."

But Martin had no legal precedent to cite to Lyon on that, and Rosenthal
noted Martin remains one of San Francisco's largest providers of medical
marijuana.

Lyons didn't rule Monday, saying she'll probably issue her decision in
about a week.

The bad blood between Rosenthal and Martin boiled over last spring at the
annual conference of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana
Laws (NORML).

The two reportedly got into a public shouting match after Rosenthal branded
Martin a "snitch" for having testified against him at trial.

Rosenthal was convicted early last year of three marijuana cultivation
felonies, but a federal judge last summer sentenced him to only one day of
jail time he'd already served.

The judge said Rosenthal's conviction served as a warning that city and
state laws don't protect marijuana users and providers from federal law's
ban on the drug, and future providers won't receive such lenient sentences.

Prosecutors appealed that sentence and Rosenthal appealed his conviction,
claiming that jurors were unfairly kept in the dark about his permission
from Oakland officials to grow marijuana and provide it to patients with
doctors' recommendations under the state law. Those appeals are pending.