MEDICINAL MARIJUANA ADVOCATES PREPARE FOR 'DAY OF DIRECT ACTION'

BERKELEY -- Erik Levy said he's been arrested twice for using
marijuana for medicinal purposes, and he's willing to give up his
freedom again to protect the rights of other patients whose access to
the drug is being threatened.

Levy, along with hundreds of activists across the state, met over the
weekend to prepare for the national "day of direct action" scheduled
for today.

Today, more than a thousand advocates for medical marijuana are
planning to picket, rally and risk arrest in 54 U.S. cities to protest
what they refer to as the Drug Enforcement Agency's "attempt to
re-criminalize medical cannabis."

Bay Area activists are planning to protest at the Oakland and San
Francisco federal buildings at noon.

"My mother thinks I'm a criminal because I use this stuff and that
really upsets me," said Levy, 41, a founding member of the Lamps
League of American Marijuana Patients and Supporters in San Francisco.
He uses the drug to treat a chronic form of depression he was
diagnosed with.

The group who gathered Sunday were schooled on how to participate in a
nonviolent action -- whether their role is passing out leaflets or
resisting arrest during a sit-in.

They brainstormed on creative ways to catch the eye of DEA officials
and the media for Thursday's demonstration. Some ideas included
planting marijuana gardens in front of protest sites, staging a mock
funeral and flooding federal communication lines with faxes and
telephone calls listing their demands.

"We ask ourselves, how much disruption is too much? But I feel the DEA
is making me do this," said Steph Sherer, executive director of
Americans for Safe Access in Berkeley.

"We need the federal government to enforce the law. We know that
medical marijuana works and it's not right that at any moment the DEA
can come in and bust patients who use it."

Proposition 215, passed by 56 percent of voters in 1996, protects
seriously and terminally ill patients from criminal penalties for
using marijuana.

But about a year after the law was passed, owners of cannabis centers
found themselves caught in lawsuits brought by federal and state law
enforcement officials, or defending themselves from criminal charges.

Organizers said the nation-wide action is in direct response to DEA
raids on eight medical marijuana dispensaries in California that may
be forced to close their doors after court proceedings concluded on,
or after, today. The group claims that Attorney General John Ashcroft
and DEA officials embarked on a campaign to close down medical
marijuana cooperatives operating within the constraints of the law.
The Cannabis Action Network is demanding: (1) that President Bush and
Attorney General Ashcroft declare a moratorium on "the federal
anti-medical marijuana campaign" and grant states the right to choose
and govern medical marijuana laws; (2) that Bush declare support of
the States Rights to Medical Marijuana Act introduced in the House
last year; (3) that all prosecutions against medical marijuana
patients, growers and dispensaries stop.

Dr. Mike Alcalay, medical director of the Oakland Cannabis Buyer
Cooperative, which is temporarily barred from distributing medical
marijuana due to a Supreme Court decision last year, said the
government is ignoring all the information about medicinal marijuana.
"It's one of the safest drugs out there. No one dies of an overdose,"
said Alcalay, who uses marijuana to treat his illness -- AIDS. "This
has nothing to do with science, it's all about politics."