U.S. AGENTS RAID CALIF. MEDICAL MARIJUANA CLUB

SAN FRANCISCO, - U.S. agents raided a California
medical marijuana club and arrested four people on Tuesday, provoking
local protest as the Bush administration's top drug enforcement
official arrived to defend his get-tough-on-drugs policy.

Demonstrating that federal officials are determined to push
prosecution of marijuana cases despite California's 1996 law
legalizing the drug for certain medical purposes, Drug Enforcement
Administration officers searched clubs and homes in San Francisco and
surrounding communities, ordered one cannabis club shut down and made
four arrests.

DEA spokesman Richard Meyer said the crackdown targeted a
marijuana-smuggling operation linking San Francisco area activists.

"It pertains to smuggling and trafficking of marijuana and also some
possible money laundering," Meyer said, adding that the investigation
had been aided by the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Customs
Service.

The raids were condemned by San Francisco officials, who have been
outspoken in support of the right of Californians to use marijuana to
treat symptoms of anything from glaucoma to AIDS and cancer.

"This is the federal government trying to make a point in opposition
to the voters of California," San Francisco District Attorney Terence
Hallinan told a crowd of several hundred chanting protesters outside a
hall where DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson was delivering a speech.
"The voters should be outraged."

Officials and club members said the raid on San Francisco's "Harm
Reduction Center" cannabis club began early on Tuesday morning, and
that agents ordered the building closed while removing hundreds of
marijuana plants as well as computers and other equipment.

The club's director, Richard Watts, was charged along with two
associates, one of whom was arrested in Canada. Another man, James
Halloran of Oakland, was arrested in a separate case and charged with
cultivating hundreds of marijuana plants.

"It's a travesty of American justice," said witness Eric Levy,
standing outside the club's shuttered storefront.

MORE RAIDS SHOULD BE EXPECTED

Hutchinson, a former Republican congressman named to the DEA in
August, said California should expect more federal sweeps against
marijuana-distribution clubs.

"The DEA must simply follow the law," Hutchinson said to jeers from an
audience packed with medical marijuana advocates. "We don't make a
judgment of use and abuse. We make a judgment of legal and illegal."

Tuesday's crackdown marked the DEA's latest tough line in California,
where voters in 1996 overwhelmingly approved Proposition 215 as the
first law in the country legalizing medical marijuana use with a
doctor's prescription.

That state law was challenged by federal officials. In May, the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled in the case of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers'
Cooperative that federal anti-drug laws do not permit legal
distribution of marijuana as a "medical necessity" for seriously ill
patients.

The raid came on the same day that President George W. Bush unveiled
in W ashington a new anti-drug strategy aimed at cutting use of
illegal drugs by 10 percent over two years and 25 percent over five
years.

The Supreme Court's ruling against medical marijuana has been widely
ignored in California, where a number of cannabis clubs have continued
to operate with tacit permission from local authorities.

But recently the DEA has taken a tougher line, moving against the Los
Angeles Cannabis Resource Center in October and against the San
Francisco "Harm Reduction Center" on Tuesday.

Hutchinson said Tuesday's raid was not aimed at targeting individual
medical marijuana users but rather "major traffickers" who supply the
drug.

He also vowed that federal drug officials would continue to accumulate
information from the scientific community on the potential medical
uses of smoked marijuana, noting that the DEA itself had approved one
such study now underway at the University of California San Diego.