SANTA CRUZ, POT CLUB DEFY FEDS AS OFFICIALS TAKE UP CAUSE OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA

SAN FRANCISCO - Officials in the ultra-liberal seaside town of Santa Cruz
may not be marijuana smokers themselves, but yesterday 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 giving away the drug to sick patients.

"Santa Cruz is a special place, and today we're letting the world know how
compassionate we can be," Krohn said. "We're taking a stand."

More than 1,000 community members jammed into a gardenlike courtyard for a
supportive demonstration during the giveaway. 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. Each time the drug was dispensed, she said, the
crowd went wild.

"What was best were the speeches," Reilly said. "There were medical-
marijuana attorneys, doctors and even a county supervisor. And the message
was about love and healing and trying to alleviate suffering."

Six of seven council members appeared, along with Krohn.

Richard Meyer, a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) spokesman in San
Francisco, 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 flaunting federal law. And we here at the DEA take
violations of the law very seriously."

Marijuana - medical or otherwise - is illegal under federal law. But under
California law, the drug is legal if it is recommended by a doctor.

Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington also have
passed laws allowing marijuana to be grown and distributed to patients with
a doctor's prescription.

An irate Meyer said, "Drugs are not something to joke about, especially the
city-sanctioned distribution of marijuana."

Said Reilly: "We don't think it's funny either. We take this issue very
seriously."

Meyer would not say whether DEA agents had attended the rally and would not
discuss whether any arrests had been made.

Police referred all media calls to City Hall, but local authorities said
they did not plan to arrest anyone who showed up with a marijuana prescription.

On Sept. 5, federal agents raided a Santa Cruz medical-marijuana
collective, arrested three people and confiscated 130 plants.

The move was met with outrage by residents of this surfers' haven and
university town 75 miles south of San Francisco.

Four years before state voters approved Proposition 215, allowing marijuana
for medicinal purposes, Santa Cruz residents - by a margin of 77 percent -
approved a measure ending the prohibition of medical marijuana.

For years, Santa Cruz authorities have cooperated with local collectives,
helping set standards for medicinal-marijuana use, issuing IDs and looking
the other way as suppliers provided free, organically grown marijuana.

No one answered the phone at the Women's Alliance for Medical Marijuana,
but a recording stressed that the event was not a "free pot giveaway" and
that the drug would be distributed only to "certain patients with support
of many city officials."

The message described yesterday's gathering as a "wonderful, quiet and
orderly vigil in honor of seriously ill and dying patients."