SHOPPING IN OAKLAND FOR HER MEDICINE

Lenore goes to Oakland for a special blend known as White Widow. It's
her medical marijuana. She takes it on those days, she says, "when I'm
at the bottom."

Lenore was diagnosed with breast cancer around Thanksgiving. She felt
something in her breast while toweling off at the gym and went
immediately for an exam. She's started chemotherapy and is weighing
other treatment options.

Part of the healing involves shopping for pot in downtown
Oakland.

"It's a little weird" to be picking out buds over the counter, says
Lenore. But she's found the experience to be easy and definitely worthwhile.

She has a note from her oncologist that makes her legal. Early on she
asked her doctor about medical marijuana. He signed a form that allows
her to buy it. It's not a prescription but a note that carefully
avoids saying he approves or recommends medical marijuana. It merely
states Lenore can receive it while being treated for cancer.

To gain entry to a medical marijuana distribution site she needs to
show the doctor's note and membership card for the Cannabis Buyers
Cooperative. Her buyers card cost $25 and is good for a year. The word
"compassion" is stamped on the front. This refers to the Compassionate
Use Act of 1996, or California's Proposition 215, which allowed
seriously ill patients to obtain marijuana with a doctor's OK. That
was back when the word compassion was more than a political spin term.

The people in Oakland who sell medical marijuana refer to it as
"medicine," and so does Lenore. "I used to call it dope, but that has
a bad connotation, and pot seems like street stuff. This really is
medicine."

They asked Lenore what symptoms she wanted to alleviate. Insomnia?
Lack of appetite? There are different blends of cannabis that
purportedly have different effects. Some are calming. Others provide
energy.

"I told them I wanted euphoria," said Lenore. "I wanted to buffer the
bad feelings. They knew what I meant. The people there are friendly
and probably patients themselves. They called me 'Ma'am.'"

She purchased an eighth of an ounce of White Widow for $55 and a $300
vaporizer. She chose the vaporizer because she worried about coughing
if she smoked.

"This way it's more like breathing steam." She uses it before and
during each run of chemotherapy.

"I suppose you could really get blasted on it, but that's not my
objective. I'm only interested in a mild edge. It's a mood elevator.
It comes on slowly and fades slowly."

It's in bud form and comes in orange plastic prescription bottles with
tamper-proof caps. At another distributor, in Berkeley, she purchased
the drug in baggies.

That's more the style of the old days when marijuana was not so much
about medicine. Some people can't get past those old days.

Take John Ashcroft, for instance, and other federal drug enforcers.
Don't they have enough real threats to pursue without harassing sick
people and those who help them?

The latest shameful act is the Kafka-esque case of medical marijuana
advocate Ed Rosenthal of Oakland, convicted earlier this month of
federal cultivation charges by a jury that was not allowed to know he
grew it for medical patients.

Lenore shakes her head in disbelief. "Medical marijuana is such a
benign option. To demonize it is laughable. Except that they're serious."

Because that is the case Lenore has now made two purchases. She needs
to plan ahead. Next time she'll go to a place in Marin County where
they take credit cards. She likes the brashness of it, "putting
marijuana on my Visa card."