MEDICAL MARIJUANA EXHIBIT ON DISPLAY

A shy seventh-grader's hotly disputed medical marijuana science project,
dubbed "Mary Jane for Pain," was exhibited at a science fair, but without
the pot-laced products that officials refused to allow.

Something else was conspicuously absent at the science fair - the student.
Relatives said she was so embarrassed by the media attention about the pot
project that she stayed home.

The project originally featured literature about medical marijuana
alongside fake pot-laced muffins and real marijuana-infused rubbing
alcohol. The student had spent three months researching the benefits of
marijuana for AIDS and cancer patients.

School officials decided that the entry met science fair guidelines if the
pot products weren't included.

The watered-down version of the project - newspaper clippings of pot club
busts fixed to black cardboard - failed to place among the finalists at the
science fair.

"Even though she didn't win and she didn't place, she learned more out of
this project than all the kids at that science fair combined," said the
girl's aunt, Jackie Fitzhenry.

Fitzhenry works at a nonprofit organization that dispenses marijuana
muffins and other cannabis-laced products to people suffering from terminal
illnesses.

When the girl brought her display to Mission Hill Junior High School for
approval last week, school administrators sent the pot props back to the
girl's home. The officials later said her project could be shown if the
marijuana products were left out.

"She had some good questions," said Mission Hill Principal Cathy
Stefanki-Iglesias. "The value is in what the student learned from the
scientific process."

The girl has refused to be interviewed about her project and asked that her
name not be released. Her father, Joe Morris, agreed that the experience
had been a valuable one for his family.

"She came up with a hypothesis and a conclusion and, you know what? We
learned something," Morris said. "Medical marijuana isn't a bunch of people
sitting around taking payments from the government to smoke marijuana."

At the fair, the girl's schoolmates and their parents talked less about the
blue ribbon entries and more about medicinal marijuana.

One mother, Stephanie Raugust, said she didn't have a problem with medical
marijuana as a subject matter. But she said she didn't think "glorifying
drug use was the best thing to do."

Eighth-grader Amelia Telt, 13, said she wouldn't be allowed to tackle the
thorny issue for a science project.

"My mom would freak out," she said. "She'd probably send me to boot camp."