SANTA CRUZ OFFICIALS JOIN MEDICAL POT RALLY

Officials in the ultra-liberal seaside town of Santa Cruz may not be
marijuana smokers themselves, but on Tuesday they became pot purveyors with
a political cause.

In a display of defiance triggered by a recent federal bust of a local
medical marijuana club, Mayor Christopher Krohn and numerous City Council
members met outside City Hall to join workers from the Women's Alliance for
Medical Marijuana in dispensing the drug to sick patients.

Several hundred residents filled the town's City Hall plaza to cheer
speakers and throw an old-fashioned anti-government rally.

Santa Cruz Vice Mayor Emily Reilly said suppliers drew names from a hat to
symbolically hand out pot prescriptions to a dozen patients who would have
normally picked up their medication in private Tuesday. Each time the drug
was dispensed, she said, the crowd went wild.

But Richard Meyer, a Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman in San
Francisco, said he was not amused.

"We're dismayed that the City Council and the mayor of Santa Cruz would
condone the distribution of marijuana," he said. "I don't know what they're
thinking, but they're flouting federal law. And we here at the DEA take
violations of the law very seriously."