ROSENTHAL'S FEDERAL DRUG TRIAL TURNS SURREAL

They viewed the glossy color photographs of meticulously tended marijuana
mother plants flourishing under timed lights inside an Oakland, Calif.
warehouse. Then they watched a videotape showing DEA agents uprooting
nearby marijuana cuttings to determine which had roots, and could thus be
considered "plants" under the federal sentencing guidelines.

It was all in a day's work for jurors in the ongoing, and often surreal,
federal drug trial of former High Times advice columnist "Ask Ed"
Rosenthal, who is facing 20 years in prison for cultivating medical cannabis.

Federal prosecutors have built their case against Rosenthal by barring
pre-trial testimony of Oakland city officials who said Rosenthal grew the
plants for the city's medical marijuana program. But the government has
subpoenaed testimony from an array of people who simply saw the plants,
including a fellow grower, the proprietor of a medical cannabis club,
Rosenthal's landlord, an electrician and even a fireman. These legal
tactics offer a blueprint of the government's strategy to halt the
distribution of medical marijuana in California - and perhaps in the other
seven states that have voted for it.

"This is the federal government at war with its own citizens and I like to
think that years from now we will look back on this as a dark chapter in
our nation's history," said California State Assemblymember Mark Leno. "The
thought of a man like Ed Rosenthal being threatened with twenty years of
imprisonment is an outrage. The man is not a criminal."

Federal prosecutors contend that marijuana is illegal and do not recognize
California's 1996 Compassionate Use Act (Prop. 215) which permits patients
to possess, grow and consume cannabis with a doctor's recommendation.
Rosenthal, who has authored a half dozen how-to books on marijuana growing,
has been charged with maintaining a place to grow marijuana at the Oakland
warehouse and cultivating more than 100 marijuana plants at the site.

He has also been charged with conspiring to grow more than 1,000 plants
with Ken Hayes and Rick Watts at the Harm Reduction Center, a San Francisco
medical marijuana club. Prosecutors say Hayes fled to Seattle where he
chartered a small plane and flew to a remote Canadian airfield with $13,000
hidden in his pants. Watts crashed his car after learning that he too was
facing 20 years in prison and his attorney says his injuries prevent him
from appearing in court.

Rosenthal's trial has become a cause celeb in Northern California where
activists have launched a billboard campaign to condemn the imprisonment of
medical cannabis growers. The billboards read: "Compassion, Not Federal
Prison."

Federal prosecutors made an unsuccessful appeal to the judge to keep
Rosenthal and his attorneys from speaking to the press after the San
Francisco Examiner published a front page photo of Rosenthal and his
daughter with the headline, "My Dad's A Hero."

The government kicked off its case against Rosenthal by subpoenaing James
Halloran, his former marijuana cultivation and racquetball partner, who was
arrested in the same DEA sweep last February. Halloran testified that
shortly after the passage of Prop. 215, he signed a lease on the
800-square-foot warehouse and brought in lights, fans and growing trays to
raise a crop of cloned cannabis plants with Rosenthal. Halloran dissolved
the partnership in 1998 and purchased plants from Rosenthal for his own
4,000 plant medical marijuana growing operation.

Halloran, who was facing three life terms for these activities, agreed to
cooperate with the government for a reduced sentence of 56 months.

Rosenthal's former landlord, Leslie Wilmer, also testified that he saw
Rosenthal's cannabis crop, as did German Sierra, a firefighter with the
Oakland Fire Department. Sierra, who conducted a fire safety inspection at
the warehouse, noted that Rosenthal had an Oakland business license. Both
men were prevented from explaining why it did not occur to them to report
the crop to police.

"I've ruled that the purpose for which the marijuana was grown is not a
defense and is irrelevant," said Judge Charles Breyer.

Judge Breyer also rejected the defense's argument that the government
entrapped Rosenthal and blocked the testimony of a DEA agent who told local
activists that he would respect California's medical cannabis laws. DEA
agent Dan Tuey was permitted to take the stand to painstakingly document
over 3,000 plants and cuttings seized from the warehouse, a process that
appeared to exhaust jurors. Defense attorneys doggedly challenged the plant
counts, but were admonished by the judge for commenting on the government's
evidece.

Divide And Conquer

The DEA contends that Rosenthal is using Prop. 215 as a smokescreen for
drug profiteering, and prosecutors trying the case have attempted to turn
growers and club operators against each other.

When Hayes fled to Canada, his medical marijuana club underwent the same
upheaval that many businesses endure when a founder suddenly leaves. But
prosecutors moved to take advantage of the turmoil. "The feds are using us
as an example to scare all these other dispensers of medical cannabis into
submission," said Ken Hayes, who is seeking political asylum in Canada. "I
didn't want to be used as a federal government trophy."

Former club employee Robert Martin, who was forced to testify under a grant
of immunity, alleged that Hayes drew down the club's accounts to pay for
his exile. Bills went unpaid and the power was shut off. Martin, who now
runs another medical marijuana club, began covering expenses out of his own
pocket, but testified that he wrote Rosenthal bad checks for his plants
because he believed Rosenthal was attempting to take over the operation.
The prosecution then produced an unsigned letter to Rosenthal, seized from
Watts' computer. The letter suggests that Rosenthal was selling
bug-infested plants as an act of "willfull sabotage" to infect other
growers and corner the medical marijuana market, a charge Rosenthal denies.

Both Rosenthal and Watts discount the government's claim that there was a
power struggle at the club.

Rosenthal says he was simply concerned that the club, "continue to take
care of patients and supply them with marijuana." Watts says the Harm
Reduction Center was being run by a board of directors that San Francisco
District Attorney Terence Hallinan had encouraged to avoid management disputes.

"I never intended to run the club," said Watts, who said he was in charge
of building maintenance and overseeing the club's counseling program.

Jane Weirick, a long-time medical marijuana activist and consultant to Bay
Area medical cannabis dispensaries, said the Harm Reduction Center simply
suffered from a lack of leadership. "There was no one really qualified to
run the place and we were concerned that the people who had legal control
of it were becoming an embarrassment to the city," said Weirick. "It was a
very big ship with no rudder in an ocean full of icebergs."

Leno, a former San Francisco city supervisor, believes that that the city
should consider growing and distributing its own medical cannabis. Leno
authored a successful ballot measure last November which directed the city
to study the project. Some patients are frustrated that the measure did not
compel the city to act, but Leno says a select committee of city
supervisors is pursuing the issue.

"The question is how to give patients access to their medicine if the
federal government is going to continue their assault on those growers who,
at great risk, attempt to provide patients with their physician recommended
medicine," said Leno.