A LAWYER WHO WANTS TO SEE THE POT CALLED LEGAL

RUTH M. LIEBESMAN wants the point made that serious people are involved
with the newly reconstituted New York City chapter of the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws; Norml, for short.

Ms. Liebesman, who is 44 and a criminal defense lawyer, keeps bringing this
up. She looks serious - and tired, her brown hair still damp as she sits in
a Midtown hotel for breakfast. She did not get home until 2:30 a.m. from
the group's coming-out party at Tobacco Road, a Hell's Kitchen bar.

No, she says, she did not light up.

"I'm actually a very straight person," says Ms. Liebesman, who is wearing a
conservative plaid skirt and a gray turtleneck that brings out her piercing
blue eyes. "I'm not even much of a pot smoker. I have to have credibility
as a criminal defense lawyer. I have to be above reproach.

"I smoked plenty of weed in college, and wouldn't it have been a shame had
I been arrested, branded a criminal and not able to go to law school?"

Ms. Liebesman is tough and focused. This is exactly where she wants the
interview to be. She lets loose about the need for legalization of
marijuana, railing about the waste in time and money of arresting tens of
thousands of pot smokers in the city, particularly now with budget cuts and
terrorism concerns.

"That's a simple lack of perspective and a failure to prioritize," she says.

Just about now, though, the conversation runs off track. Outside, two or
three suspiciously large kangaroos, perhaps as many as five, stride grandly
across West 44th Street and into the hotel. It is a distraction.

Ms. Liebesman swings around to watch. She's not humorless. She quips that
they may be Norml members. The kangaroos, their fake marsupial ears
flopping, are apparently on their way to a promotional event.

Other odd matters arise, best left for later, like Ms. Liebesman's
recollection of seeing an unidentified flying object at age 18. She's not
eager to discuss this when it is broached, nor the mysterious cuts she says
were found on her body after she had a dream.

Getting back to the marijuana. She's asked if changing the drug laws has
become more politically palatable. The issue was prominent in the campaigns
of Tom Golisano, the Independence Party candidate for governor, and John F.
Greco, the Libertarian Party contender who previously headed the Norml chapter.

Ms. Liebesman, eating scrambled eggs, pauses. "I think it's a good time,
but the government lags," she says.

Things are that bad, eh? "It's a crossroads time," she adds. "I think we
have a lot of work to do, but if we make our positions clear and explain to
people what we are trying to do, they will agree with us. I just see the
laws as causing more harm than the drug. The drug laws have completely
failed. Illegality does not prevent people from obtaining their drug of
choice."

She became executive director of the embryonic New York City chapter of
Norml, a Washington-based group, three months ago. She says the chapter
began in August 2001, but got off to a bad start. So, did Norml get any
juice from its $500,000 advertising campaign earlier this year? Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg was the centerpiece, with an offhand remark he made on
the campaign trail about his marijuana use: "You bet I did. And I enjoyed it."

Ms. Liebesman, the group's legal director then, looks serious again, grim.
"Unfortunately, that was squandered," she says without pointing fingers.
"There was a lot of press then and it was a good opportunity for New York
Norml to jump in. I wasn't running it. And I don't know why it wasn't
jumped on."

She shifts in her chair. She would rather outline goals. She wants to
discuss drug reform with the mayor. She wants action on a state law enacted
in 1980, but never implemented, to allow the use of medical marijuana.

Ms. Liebesman, a solo practitioner with an office in the financial
district, has handled a slew of drug cases. She has defended people who buy
and distribute marijuana to AIDS patients who say the drug fights nausea
and loss of appetite.

She also became friends with Uri Geller, the self-proclaimed psychic, after
helping him work out a settlement in a dispute over attorney fees. In the
mid-1990's, she was staying with Mr. Geller and his wife when she says she
awoke to find blistery cuts. She says her doctor told her they looked like
classic laparoscopy incisions. "I said, `I never had a laparoscopy,' and
that was that," she says.

The cuts vanished in four weeks. "I have no idea what it was," she says.

She is more certain about her U.F.O. sighting in Pennsylvania. "I believe
U.F.O.'s are out there, sure," she says. "Out of all the billions of
planets, I don't believe this is the best God is capable of doing."

EVEN as a child, when parapsychology became an interest, she says her
mother had a hunch she would become a lawyer. She studied law at Suffolk
University in Boston. "I was the criminal defense attorney for my siblings
from the time I could talk," she says. "If they got in trouble, I'd jump to
their defense."

She was born in England, the daughter of a United States Air Force doctor,
and grew up mostly in Westfield, N.J. She lives in Cliffside Park, N.J.,
with her boyfriend, a sports agent.

As breakfast is cleared, Ms. Liebesman is looking alarmed. She doesn't want
to come off as a screwball, diverting attention from Norml's mission. She
calls later and mentions she is a member of Mensa, the high-I.Q. group.

So, how to tie all this back to Norml? Who knows. Ask the kangaroos.