MEDICAL MARIJUANA PROPONENTS ASK RAID ON POT FARM TO BE DECLARED ILLEGAL

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The Drug Enforcement Administration's autumn raid
on a farm that cultivated pot for sick and dying people was both
illegal and immoral, members of a medical marijuana movement argued
Monday in federal court.

"We are not asserting the right to market marijuana, but to cultivate
and use it to prolong life and give comfort to the dying," said Gerald
Uelmen, a Santa Clara University law professor who represents about
200 chronically and terminally ill people. "We are asserting the
fundamental rights of patients so they can meet their death
without agony and suffering."

The case, which pits state rules on medical marijuana against federal
laws declaring it an illegal drug, marks the first time a public
entity has sued the federal government on behalf of patients who need
medical marijuana.

The city and county of Santa Cruz sued the DEA and Attorney General
John Ashcroft in April, asking for an injunction requiring that
federal agents stay away from a cooperative farm that grows marijuana
on a quiet coastal road about 15 miles north of Santa Cruz. In
September, agents uprooted about 165 plants and arrested the owners of
the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, Valerie and Michael Corral.

The lawsuit contends that since the raid, WAMM has been unable to
provide co-op members with necessary medicine to relieve nausea and
pain. This has caused an "insurmountable" level of pain and suffering
and hastened the deaths of the most vulnerable WAMM members, lawyers
said.

Marijuana is illegal under federal law. State law in California -- as
well as Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and
Washington -- allows marijuana to be grown and distributed to people
with a doctor's recommendation.

The Supreme Court ruled in May 2002 that people charged with violating
federal drug laws cannot use medical necessity as their defense. But
Uelmen said the justices left open whether states could legalize
medical marijuana under the 10th Amendment, which grants states powers
not exercised by the federal government, or under the 14th Amendment's
right to due process.

The WAMM case also hinges in part on whether the Constitution's
commerce clause applies to the California farm. The clause gives
Congress power to regulate interstate trade.

But the patients argue the farm is neither interstate nor commercial.
The cooperative is owned by about 200 patients and caregivers in the
Santa Cruz area whose doctors have endorsed the use of marijuana to
minimize seizures and migraines, or to improve patients' ability to
deal with chemotherapy or other treatment.

Members of the cooperative receive marijuana up to once a week and
must promise to use the pot only within California. If physically
able, they and their caregivers work the fields and supervise
distribution of the drug in forms such as cigarettes and baked goods,
but no money trades hands. The Corrals say the small farm could not
supply more than the roughly 200 members.

Justice Department lawyer Mark Quinlivan argued that it didn't matter
if the co-op was a noncommercial operation without known ties to gangs
or out-of-state groups. Any type of drug trade was an interstate
issue, he said, and only the Food and Drug Administration can conduct
experiments using illegal drugs.

"There isn't anyone here who doesn't have a friend or relative in
dire straits," Quinlivan said to a courtroom packed with people in
wheelchairs or suffering from epilepsy, post-polio syndrome and
terminal cancer. But, he said, "the FDA drug approval process has
served this country well over the years."

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel promised to review hundreds of pages
of evidence, and he urged WAMM members, city and county officials and
federal agents to work together.