August 11, 2003

SANTA CRUZ — As another summer day fades, the sick and dying begin to gather.

An elderly woman leans unsteadily on her walker. A hip young paraplegic fellow glides his electric wheelchair past a dapper old man clutching a cane. Men wiry with AIDS sidle into folding chairs in the cramped meeting hall. A blind man hunkers at the edge of the throng. There is talk of housing and finances, discussions of dipping health and impending death.

They finish by flouting federal law.

Marijuana, deemed illegal by the U.S. for any purpose, is dispensed in small baggies to the group, most of them terminally ill with AIDS or cancer. They say their brand of medicine, justified under California's 1996 medicinal marijuana initiative, brings relief from pain and suffering.

But it has also brought the federal government down on the 220-member Santa Cruz collective, the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana. Last year, drug agents arrested WAMM's founders, Valerie and Mike Corral, during a raid of the group's small pot garden on a secluded hillside terrace up the coast.

The bust, part of a broader campaign by the Bush administration to trip up California's medical marijuana movement, prompted a publicity backlash. With the national media watching, Santa Cruz council members invited WAMM activists to conduct their weekly pot handout at City Hall.

Now the city and county of Santa Cruz, a liberal bastion, have joined the medical marijuana collective in a lawsuit against Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and the U.S. government.

Despite the unequivocal U.S. stance against marijuana, these advocates argue that their cultivation and use of pot — approved by Santa Cruz police, free of profit motive, unfettered by illegal transport over state lines — is a constitutionally protected right that trumps federal narcotics laws. They want to grow marijuana free of federal raids.

U.S. officials, who consider medical marijuana a Trojan horse for the drug legalization movement, counter that the law prohibits the use of pot by anyone, even the seriously ill. A federal judge in San Jose is expected to decide the case within the month.

Whatever the ruling, the legal battle appears destined to end up at the U.S. Supreme Court. Gerald Uelmen, the University of Santa Clara law professor who served on O.J. Simpson's defense team and now represents WAMM, figures he's found the perfect test case, "the gold standard" for a credible medical marijuana dispensary.