LEGAL POT-SMOKER FROM BOCA SUES AIRLINE FOR KEEPING HIM OFF PLANE

When one of the seven people in the country legally allowed to puff
marijuana called a news conference last summer and threatened to sue
Delta Air Lines for refusing to allow him on a plane with his herbal
medicine, he was not just blowing smoke.

Irvin Rosenfeld, a 48-year-old Boca Raton stockbroker, never got the
apology he wanted, so he filed a federal discrimination lawsuit in
Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday, seeking unspecified monetary damages
and a promise from Delta that it would stop violating the Air
Carriers Access Act of 1986.

Rosenfeld suffers from a rare and painful bone disease but finds
relief in smoking marijuana, prescribed by a doctor and grown for the
government. The smoking dulls the constant, piercing pain but does
not make Rosenfeld euphoric, he said.

Relief, in the form of about 300 marijuana cigarettes, arrives by
mail each month in a nondescript tin canister. On an average day,
Rosenfeld said, he smokes about a dozen.

When flying Delta at least a dozen times before this incident,
Rosenfeld said he always contacted the airline ahead of time and made
arrangements to take a smoke break in a secluded area of an airport
if there was a lengthy layover on his itinerary.

He has lit up in smoking lounges and even police substations at
airports. But when he went to board a March 26 flight bound for
Washington, D.C., where he was to attend a U.S. Supreme Court session
on medicinal marijuana, a Delta worker told him he could not board
with his canister of cannabis.

Refusing him a seat on the airliner was like booting a diabetic from
the flight because he carried hypodermic needles and insulin, said
Christopher C. Sharp, Rosenfeld's lawyer.

The Air Carrier Access Act protects against discrimination for a
disability, and a violation can result in punitive damages. Under the
act, Delta was required to specify in writing why Rosenfeld could not
board the airline and why he was thought to be a threat to the safety
of everyone on board, Sharp said.

Delta did not do that. The airline also violated the law by not
having a complaint resolution officer at the airport to explain the
law and the company's decision to Rosenfeld, the lawsuit states.

Delta, however, said the law is on its side.

"Under federal law, marijuana is an illegal drug, and I'm not aware
of any medical use exception of the nature he claims or of any
private citizen having a right to possess it in the United States,"
said Katie Connell, a Delta spokeswoman.

Rosenfeld said he showed the Delta counter agent his prescription and
even called a Broward Sheriff's officer to the counter to verify his
claim. The officer happened to be familiar with the medicinal
marijuana program and told the ticket agent -- to no avail, said
Rosenfeld.

Neither Rosenfeld nor a representative of the federal agency that he
says oversees the medicinal marijuana program has presented any
documentation to Delta proving that he is legally prescribed
cannabis, Connell said. If that documentation were presented, Delta
would readily comply with that advice, she said.