'TYPICAL' SANTA CRUZ GATHERING WAS TIGHTLY CONTROLLED

SANTA CRUZ - Tuesday's medical-marijuana rally at City Halldrew a typical
Santa Cruz crowd. There was a three-person theater troupe re-enacting the
recent federal raid of a local pot garden that triggered the rally.

The crowd booed as an actor, dressed as a federal agent, busted a woman
dressed as a doctor.

She was pushing a wheelchair carrying a "patient" with aqua-colored hair.
One man played drums on the back of a trailer as he was driven around the
block. Joining them was an odd assortment of hippies, students, townspeople
and the just the plain old curious. "Ia ve never been to one of these
things," said John Darpino of Santa Cruz. "If (medical marijuana) is right
for you, go ahead, as long as it doesna t hurt anybody else." But while
the atmosphere around the rally was loose, what they watched was a strictly
controlled event. The giveaway a " cooperative members were the only
recipients a " was organized by the Wo/Mena s Alliance for Medical
Marijuana, but had the supportof the City Council. Six of seven members
attended, as did a county supervisor. City officials stressed before the
event that it was not city-sanctioned and that officials would handle no
marijuana, and thata s how the event unfolded. The public stood in the
halla s courtyard, facing the front of the building.

A horde of media people was corralled on the steps to the left of the
entrance, with politicians facing them on the right.

Alliance patients sat behind the columns of the porch in the middle. About
a dozen plain-clothed police detectives could be seen, some hanging around
the edges of the crowd in black shades and shiny black dress shoes,
watching the event as others mingled in the crowd. About a dozen members of
the cooperative a " chosen by drawing names out of a hat a " were on hand.
They proceeded to the front, one by one, collected their weekly supply of
marijuana and briefly shared their story.

Then it was on to the next one. Members do not pay for the marijuana. Santa
Cruz homeowner George Mead said he showed up to see the spectacle.

He did not think the national attention the event was drawing would help
Santa Cruza s image or the local tourism industry, but said at least it
was taking media attention away from the citya s problems with panhandlers
on Pacific Avenue. Woody Carroll of Santa Cruz said he showed up to support
the patients.

He said he came, in part, because he believes marijuana will one day be
legal and his two young daughters will ask him about the days when it was
outlawed, and he wants to be able to share that history with them.

Tony Madrigal said he would like to see the city use the negative national
publicity the Drug Enforcement Administration has been receiving from their
raid on the garden earlier this month as leverage to get the DEA to crack
down on the problem of heroin dealers in the Beach Flats.

Alan Brady of Santa Cruz said he thinks the confrontation between medical
users in California and the federal government could change national
marijuana policy.

"This is the beginning of the end of the prohibition," he said.