SANTA CRUZ DEFIES U.S. ON MARIJUANA

City Officials Vow to Defend Medical Uses

SANTA CRUZ, Calif., Sept 17 -- There were speeches from lawyers about
freedom and pleas from doctors for compassion and some rhetoric against the
Bush administration. Then the patients began to roll forward in their
wheelchairs to get their prescriptions -- their marijuana buds and pot
cupcakes -- on the steps of City Hall.

The gaunt AIDS patient said marijuana helped him eat again. An elderly man
with post-polio syndrome grinned and picked up his vial. A patient
suffering from pancreatic cancer simply said "thank you." Then Jodie
Lombardo, who has lupus, decried the recent bust of the popular
medical-marijuana cooperative here as inhumane and asked what federal
authorities would do if their own loved ones were sick and needed the
relief these patients say they find in this weed.

With the mayor and most of the city council in attendance, Santa Cruz today
pledged that its efforts to deliver marijuana to the sick and dying would
continue -- despite the armed raid by federal agents two weeks ago against
a marijuana pharmacy that has been openly operating here for years.

"We are not the enemy," said Valerie Corral, one of the founders of the
medical marijuana cooperative. "Our message is not about defiance, but
peace, and we plead for the same from the government."

California is pressing its case that sick people should be permitted some
use of marijuana, and it is challenging Congress to take another look at
the issue. And through its elected officials -- from mellow Santa Cruz to
the capital in Sacramento -- the state is challenging the federal
government's insistence on prosecuting medical marijuana distributors.

In many California cities, there have been efforts to accommodate marijuana
dispensaries, and local prosecutors and police have generally either taken
a hands-off approach or worked closely with groups giving away or selling
marijuana for medical use.

Today's act of defiance was sparked by a Sept. 5 raid by federal agents at
a medical marijuana collective run by Corral and her husband, Michael. The
Corrals were instrumental in drafting Proposition 215, a 1996 ballot
initiative that made California the first of nine states to allow people
suffering from AIDS, cancer or other ailments to use marijuana to alleviate
their symptoms.

Agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration seized 167 plants and
arrested the Corrals at their Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, but
they were released later that day, and no federal charges have been filed
against them. Marijuana cases are usually tried in state court.

The Corrals' nonprofit operation has worked closely with local officials,
including doctors and police. They openly grow and distribute marijuana,
and they have issued identification cards to several hundred patients who
have prescriptions. Local law enforcement accepts the cards as proof of
need for those in possession of marijuana.

DEA officials did not contact the Santa Cruz Police Department or the
county sheriff before carrying out the raid, which officials here describe
as heavy-handed interference in a local matter.

"That's part of the outrage shown by almost everyone I've talked to," said
Santa Cruz Mayor Christopher Krohn."Whatever the stereotype of a marijuana
user is, these are very vulnerable people, people with terminal cancers who
use medical marijuana."

The DEA, however, says that marijuana remains a dangerous and prohibited
drug -- for everyone.

"The DEA is charged by Congress to enforce federal drug laws, and federal
drug laws indicate marijuana is a controlled substance," said Will Glaspy,
a DEA spokesman in Washington. "If we develop information that someone is
trafficking drugs, we're going to conduct an investigation."

The medical community believes that marijuana is not a drug to make sick
people healthy -- it can cause psychological problems, heart disease and
cancer -- but there is some evidence that it can temporarily alleviate some
symptoms, such as chronic pain, glaucoma and the debilitating loss of
appetite that can accompany AIDS and cancer, especially among those
undergoing chemotherapy. However, most physicians feel that there are
probably better drugs than marijuana to restore appetite and alleviate the
nausea of chemotherapy.

Proponents of medical marijuana say the federal government is harassing
sick people and wasting its resources on a relatively harmless drug that
might do some patients some good.

"They're hoping their actions will have such a chilling effect that other
proprietors will see what happens and put themselves out of business," said
Paul Armentano, a spokesman for the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws in Washington.

Since California voters approved the 1996 ballot initiative, federal agents
have raided a dozen pot pharmacies around the state. Some have remained
shuttered and others have reopened.

Several years ago, after the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative was shut
down, marijuana proponents won a victory in federal court, arguing that
there was a "medical necessity" loophole in the nation's drug laws and that
the government should not stand between patients and physicians.

But the Supreme Court last year affirmed that federal law supercedes state
law and barred physicians from prescribing an illegal drug.

The pro-pot advocates at Santa Cruz City Hall today stressed that their
goal was not legalization of recreational dope, but permission to
distribute "a medicinal herb." Arnold Leff, a physician who works with AIDS
patients here said, "This is not a bunch of patients lighting up and
getting high."

But federal authorities have long suspected that the medical marijuana
agenda is simply a first step toward legalization (though in California, an
arrest for simple possession equates to a parking ticket).

And this is Santa Cruz: In the crowd on the City Hall lawn, there were
others with their own agenda. They openly rolled joints and huffed away,
not sick at all, but getting high. And there wasn't a DEA agent in sight.