'IT'S MEDICINAL' VIES AGAINST 'IT'S ILLEGAL'

California Has Become the Epicenter of a States Vs. Feds Battle Over
Marijuana Use.

LOS ANGELES - At the "Sixties Paraphernalia" shop on Victory Blvd.
here, you can glimpse the past of US marijuana use - hash pipes,
"bongs," cigarette papers - and catch an earful about its future.

"The federal government is still stuck in the pre-Beatles days of
'reefer madness,' " says Skip Stanley, a bearded biker who also holds
a graduate degree in sociology. He cites a recent poll showing nearly
80 percent support for medicinal marijuana use, and notes nine states
have approved such use. "States are trying to move ahead with ways of
using this plant to alleviate suffering but the feds still think of
users as just Dead-heads and zombies."

The issue of medicinal "pot" is boiling over again. The recent
conviction in federal court of an Oakland man for marijuana
distribution is one sign, as are federal crackdowns on medical
cannabis clubs across the Golden State. State lawmakers from
Sacramento to the US Capitol are preparing laws and resolutions to
clarify existing laws in California and, by extension, eight others
with medical marijuana statutes.

The fight represents a states-rights battle that goes beyond the
symbolism of Berkeley versus the Bush administration. The clash pits
states rights to define and control criminal issues against the
federal government's authority under the Constitution to control the
shipment and trafficking of illegal substances.

"Medical marijuana may prove to be the ultimate confrontation of
state's rights vs. federalism in America," says Jonathan Turley, a
constitutional law expert at George Washington University. "The
question is whether or not states can take their own course on issues
of novel and independent social experimentation."

Many in California want the answer to be yes. California congressman
Sam Farr is introducing legislation within weeks that would create two
legal categories of marijuana - medical and criminal. The legislation
is intended to allow individuals who can prove they possess or
cultivate the plant for medical use only to use that as a defense in a
federal trial.

In the recent case of Ed Rosenthal, federal prosecutors blocked the
jury from hearing any discussion of an Oakland ordinance which was
designed to protect medical cannabis users from federal
prosecution.

Rosenthal had been deputized by the city to distribute the drug under
the rules of their own law. But jurors did not hear about this or
about state Proposition 215, passed in 1996, which legalized medical
use. Mr. Farr says "These federal agencies, including the DEA [Drug
Enforcement Administration] and Justice Department, both led by Atty.
Gen. John Ashcroft, have no respect for the laws we have here in
California" or the eight other states (Maine, Colorado, Arizona,
Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii).

At the same time, state Assemblyman Mark Leno (D) of San Francisco and
state Sen. Don Perata (D) of Oakland are formally urging the 52
members of the California congressional Delegation to amend America's
Controlled Substances Act to allow the medical necessity defense, and
to cut federal departments whose budgets are used, in their view, to
"harass, intimidate, and prosecute Californians attempting to comply
with Prop. 215."

But opponents of the medical-marijuana movement point to a federal
listing of the drug as illegal. In 2001, the Supreme Court handed
medical marijuana users a major defeat, ruling that the classification
as illegal has no exception for ill patients.

Of the states with medical-marijuana laws, "only California generates
sufficient friction [with] the federal government to force the issue,"
says Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization
for the Normalization of Marijuana Laws (NORML).

Whether or not the Farr legislation or the Leno/Perata initiatives
will be successful in either short or long terms is an unknown made
more precarious by the current White House, activists on both sides
agree. Many feel such legislation could pass only to be vetoed by
President Bush.