OAKLAND POT PATIENT, GROWERS FILE SUIT TO STOP FEDERAL RAIDS

Plaintiffs Say DEA, Justice Department Are Violating Their Constitutional,
Civil Rights

Thursday, October 10, 2002 - Medical marijuana patients and growers sued
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Drug Enforcement Administration
chief Asa Hutchinson on Wednesday, claiming federal raids are violating
their civil rights.

The federal lawsuit is both a response to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling
against the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative last year, and a reaction
to recent DEA raids against medical marijuana patients and providers.

At an Oakland news conference, attorney David Michael said he and
co-counsel Robert Raich will file a motion within the next five days
requesting a preliminary injunction to bar federal agents from conducting
any more raids against patients or their growers until this case is decided.

Michael called it a "landmark litigation" in which the constitutional
issues won't be clouded by any other concerns. "This case is clean; it's
going before the courts in a very clean fashion."

The federal government still deems all marijuana growth, possession or use
illegal, even though California voters approved medical use in 1996.
Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon and Washington have
similar laws.

This case's plaintiffs are patients Angel McClary Raich of Oakland -- the
attorney's wife of several months -- and Diane Monson of Oroville, plus two
"John Doe" marijuana growers from Oakland who supply Raich. The case makes
four major arguments:

- - That the Ninth and 10th amendments limit federal power, leaving certain
powers -- such as authorizing medical marijuana use -- to the states.

- - That the Constitution's commerce clause lets Congress regulate only
interstate commerce, and that Californians' medical marijuana use neither
crosses state lines nor is commerce.

- - That federal interference violates the Fifth Amendment due process rights
of Californians to be free from pain, prolong their lives and maintain the
physician-patient relationship's sanctity.

- - That medical necessity provides an exception to the federal ban on marijuana.

Angel Raich said Wednesday that she's trying "to assert my own rights to
fight for my own life."

She said she has trouble maintaining enough weight -- she's 97 pounds,
while a woman of her height should weigh between 115 and 125 pounds -- and
suffers chronic pain from scoliosis, temporomandibular joint disease,
endometriosis, fibromyalgia, a uterine fibroid tumor and a rotator cuff
injury. She also has an inoperable brain tumor and suffers post-traumatic
stress disorder from childhood abuse and nonepileptic seizures.

The lawsuit says marijuana boosts her appetite, controls her pain and helps
her cope with her post-traumatic stress, and doctors hope it might slow her
brain tumor's growth.

She vowed Wednesday that she won't put herself and her family -- she has
two teenage children -- through another round of the pain and partial
paralysis she suffered before she began taking marijuana. "There's no way
I'm going to allow the federal government to send me back to hell."

Her family practice doctor, Dr. Frank Lucido of Berkeley, said Wednesday
that he's convinced she has a medical necessity for marijuana.

Monson, a bookkeeper using marijuana to control chronic back pain, said
sheriff's deputies and DEA agents raided her home in August. Although the
deputies and a local prosecutor agreed her six marijuana plants were within
the county's guidelines for the state law, the DEA agents cut down and
removed the plants without charging her with any crime.

The DEA made similar raids Sept. 5 at the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical
Marijuana near Santa Cruz, seizing 167 plants, and Sept. 24 upon a San
Diego activist and grower, seizing 26 plants; no charges were filed in
either case.

Some of the new case's constitutional arguments mirror those Robert Raich
and other lawyers have made to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on the
Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative's behalf; the cooperative's opening
appellate brief is due Nov. 8.

The OCBC raised those issues after the U.S. Supreme Court last year struck
down its medical necessity argument for resuming distribution to patients.
But in his concurrence with that opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote
individual patients -- rather than clubs like the OCBC -- might have better
legal standing to seek such an exception.

Robert Raich on Wednesday called this new case "a direct response to the
Supreme Court's ruling."

Alameda County supervisors Keith Carson and Nate Miley and San Francisco
Health Department director Dr. Mitchell Katz sent representatives or
statements expressing their support of the lawsuit.