CONTROVERSIAL TREATMENT: WIFE, MOTHER OF TWO SAYS SHE OWES HER LIFE TO
MEDICAL MARIJUANA

A rabbit's foot, a wedding ring, a photo of the kids - the little things in
life that people keep close by. For Angel McClary Raich, it's a blue- and
gold-flecked glass pipe packed full of sticky green marijuana. ``My whole
life depends on cannabis,'' the gaunt 37-year-old says unapologetically, the
thin pipe held tight between her bony fingers. "It's my medicine. I would
die without it."

Raich, the wife of a prominent Oakland attorney and mother of two
teenagers, is a medical marijuana patient. Every two hours, she either
smokes, eats or inhales marijuana through a vaporizer, consuming more
than eight pounds of cannabis a year. She cooks with thick green
marijuana olive oil and is massaged with a creamy hemp balm.

Though she says she hates it, the dank smell and earthy taste of the
drug now permeate every aspect of her life. It's come to be her
sustenance and her lifeblood, and without it, both Raich and her
Berkeley doctor say she would become gravely ill.

Diagnosed with a laundry list of ailments, including an inoperable
brain tumor, scoliosis, wasting syndrome, seizures and chronic pain,
Raich has no choice but marijuana, he says.

"She has tried essentially all other legal alternatives to cannabis,
and the alternatives have been ineffective or result in intolerable
side effects," says her physician, Dr. Frank Lucido, explaining that
most medicines make Raich vomit violently or induce hot and cold
flashes, shakes, itching or nausea.

Though she eats at least 3,000 calories a day, she's emaciated,
carrying only 97 pounds on her 5-foot-4 inch frame. She's in constant
agony and is often so weak that she can't get out of bed or even take
herself to the bathroom. On a recent "good day," she couldn't pull
out a dining room chair to sit down without the help of her husband,
Robert.

But, before the marijuana, it used to be worse, Raich says. She was
partially paralyzed on the right side of her body and had to use a
wheelchair for four years. The cannabis - "my medicine," as she
calls it - is the only treatment that's ever worked for her. It gave
her ability to walk again and relieved the paralysis.

"Marijuana is my miracle," Raich says. "I just wish the federal
government and (Attorney General) John Ashcroft would see it that way."

Such is the clash between California's medical marijuana law, which
allows people to grow, smoke or obtain marijuana for medical needs,
and the federal government's rejection of the state's 1996
voter-approved initiative supporting such acts.

A high-profile federal crack down on the treatment has resulted in the
closure of cannabis clubs throughout the state - including Raich's
club, the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative - raids on growers and
arrests of activists like Oakland's "guru" Ed Rosenthal, who was
convicted of cultivating marijuana but spared a prison sentence last
month.

And who's left in the middle as the state and the federal government
duke it out? About 30,000 patients like Raich, who say they need
marijuana to cope with chronic pain, improve their appetite or
otherwise soothe the effects of cancer, HIV and AIDS, and degenerative
diseases like multiple sclerosis.

So Raich has taken an unusual step. Instead of idly waiting for a raid
on her or her two anonymous suppliers, she's gone on the offensive,
seeking an injunction that would prevent the federal government from
prosecuting her for using the plant she calls her "life-saver."
While she lost the case in March, she and her husband/lawyer have
appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Robert Raich, who in 2001 argued unsuccessfully before the U.S.
Supreme Court in another medical marijuana case, says he expects his
wife's case to make it before the high court as well. He and other
medical marijuana advocates hope that Angel's case will be the Roe v.
Wade of the cannabis debate, deciding once and for all that using
cannabis as a medication is protected by the Ninth Amendment.

Angel hopes so, too.

"I feel like the government wants to execute me for being sick," she
says. "Well, I'm not going to let them do it. I'm not going to give
up on my life. I have two children, and I promised them while I was in
that wheelchair that I would fight to stay alive, and I'm certainly
not going to give up on that promise now when I can move. I love my
children too much to allow Ashcroft to take away their mother."

As Raich slowly shuffles around her sunny Oakland house in blue booty
slippers, taking deliberate, small steps to move, her determination is
clear. Though each step hurts - ``my pain level is either on high or
overload 24 hours a day'' - she refuses to allow it to keep her down
on days when she has enough energy to be active.

She loves crafts and cooking. Her home is decorated with ceramic
animals she made in high school, and she bakes her own hemp zucchini
bread and carrot cake, as well as separate dinners for her family.

But her real passion is gardening, and Raich is turning her back yard
into a "sanctuary." The plot of land is filling in with
sweet-smelling jasmine and bougainvillea, and plans for a small pond
and waterfall are in the works. But it's a slow moving process since
it takes so much out of Raich. The last time she worked on it was
almost a month ago.

"I love it, but it just kills me," she says. "I'm down for weeks
after I do anything so it's going to take me a lot of stages. But I
need to have a meditation and gardening is my outlet for that. There's
something kind of healing about having your hands in the dirt."

Though she's visibly frail - her cheek bones and large, sunken in
brown eyes are her most striking features - Raich shows strength most
people could never dream of. Just breathing causes pain. Sometimes, on
real bad days, if her husband or her kids just brush against her, her
body will jerk and convulse in pain. But she persists.

"Angel has one of the strongest spirits I've ever seen," says her
husband, Robert. "That's one of the things that initially attracted
me to her."

The couple met three years ago through the Oakland Cannabis Buyers'
Cooperative, where Raich used to go to get her drugs and where Robert
is an attorney. Though activism brought them together, the pair are
more silly and sweet together than militant.

In baby talk voices, they call each other "Moosey," a pet name
referring to Robert's college days at Harvard.

"We wanted our own thing, not like honey - we wanted something
special," Angel Raich says, laughing. "Moosey just kind of fit.
We're the Mooses."

Their house is decorated appropriately. The living room is overrun
with moose stuffed animals - they even have a plush "mooseskin" rug,
with a big Bullwinkle head on it - and statues and dolls of angels.

For their wedding, a storybook affair that took place last summer at
Oakland's Dunsmuir Historic Estate, they even had a special pillow
made for the rings - a moose in a tuxedo with golden angel wings. "I
still pinch myself," says Robert Raich. "I can't believe things have
worked out so perfectly. Since the day we met, I've never looked back.
I immediately fell in love with her."

Which is why Angel's illnesses take such a toll on him, she says.
"He's my hero, my knight in shining armor," Raich says, her eyes
tearing. "I learn more and more about unconditional love from him
every day."

But it was her own unconditional love for her children, a 14-year-old
daughter and a 17-year-old son, that first brought Raich to medical
marijuana. Raich has faced serious illnesses since adolescence. Now
that she had children, she began to see it take a toll on them.

"My daughter used to cry so much because her mom was in a wheelchair
and she didn't understand why her mother couldn't do all of the things
that her friends' mothers did," Raich says, her voice low and
shaking. "It was breaking my heart - I couldn't do anything to
comfort them. I couldn't even hug them sometimes because it hurt so
much."

And then, a few weeks later, on Aug. 3, 1997, Raich's and her
children's lives changed forever. She was at a hospital in Stockton,
where she grew up and was living at the time, when a nurse who had
been working with her for a while approached her. The nurse saw that
no treatments were working on any of Raich's conditions and that she
was depressed and miserable.

"So she pulled me aside and asked me about medical marijuana," Raich
retells. "And I was totally offended. I was really mad at her for
even suggesting it because I was totally against drugs."

But when she went home that night and her daughter was in tears yet
again, Raich made up her mind to start reading up on the issue. Soon
she was seeing a doctor to get a prescription. It was then that she
says her life shifted for the better.

Still, there's not a day that goes by that Raich doesn't wish she
could find relief from another source, she says.

"I hate that I have to take cannabis. If I had a choice, I'd take the
choice in a heartbeat," she says. "But I don't have an alternative.
Cannabis is my only alternative."

With each puff she takes, Raich breathes in new life, she says. And
even more importantly to her, she exhales new life and longevity into
the time she has left with her children.

"I promised my kids I would fight to be alive and I'd do anything I
could to be here for them,'' she says. ``I won't go back on that promise."

Until she dies or finds another miracle, then, inhale and exhale will
be Raich's only medication.