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Medical marijuana backed in Santa Cruz
SANTA CRUZ, Calif., Sept. 17 (UPI) -- Quadriplegic people in wheelchairs and other people walking haltingly with serious terminal diseases came to the red brick courtyard of city hall under a cloudless sky Tuesday to receive marijuana preparations in defiance of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration policy.

City and county officials participated in the event, which was organized by medical marijuana users despite a recent DEA raid on a local garden. Six of the seven Santa Cruz city council members and two former mayors expressed their support for medical marijuana for the ill.

"We're putting patients first," Santa Cruz mayor Christopher Krohn told United Press International. "These are community members, some of the most vulnerable in our community, many who are terminally ill."

The distribution is legal under California law but not federal law, and the DEA seems unlikely to support any change in enforcement policy.

"The cultivation, distribution or possession of marijuana is illegal under federal law," agency spokesman Tom Hinojosa told UPI. "If there was evidence based on scientific study, demonstrating benefit, that might influence the DEA's thinking about whether or not physicians should be permitted to prescribe marijuana under federal law."

Members of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana placed muffins with marijuana leaves as an ingredient as well as a liquid extraction of marijuana and a marijuana preparation in a milk base, on a table. Ten members of WAMM, who had drawn lots out of a hat to participate, came forward in front of a crowd of about 600 to obtain their weekly doses. Those who are able to pay for the marijuana from WAMM do so, others do not. The drug is smoked by some patients, a WAMM member told UPI.

Medical marijuana users suffer from a variety of ailments such as cancer, chronic pain from muscle spasms in quadriplegia, HIV infection, AIDS, and post-polio syndrome.

"It decreases my involuntary muscle spasms a lot and helps tremendously with nerve pain," WAMM member Levi Castro, who is paralyzed from the neck down, told UPI. "I don't need to take a lot of the medications I used to be on, so it's a lot less harmful on my liver and kidneys."

Hal Margolin said it helps his chronic peripheral neuropathy, which gives him 24-hour pain. Patients with AIDS, post-polio syndrome, prostate cancer and brittle diabetes also told UPI the medical marijuana helps reduce pain. At least 12 of WAMM's 250 members have died over the past nine months, said the organization's Denis Berry.

Valerie Corral, who is the director of WAMM, and her husband Mike, own the land with the marijuana garden raided by the DEA. For more than five years, the Corrals have provided marijuana to people who have a recommendation from their physicians. The local sheriff, who routinely confiscates large amounts of marijuana annually from commercial marijuana operations, has not confiscated any marijuana from the Corrals.

At the event, Valerie Corral said there are legal medical marijuana users under federal law and introduced Elvy Musikka, who has glaucoma and is one of eight people approved by the federal government to smoke marijuana.

"She always carries her legal medical marijuana, rolled by the federal government, grown in the federal government's garden, one that they do not go into with guns," Corral told the crowd. Musikka displayed a large tin box and held up a handful of marijuana cigarettes.

"This isn't about recreational pot use," Emily Reilly, the vice-mayor of Santa Cruz told UPI. "What the city council is trying to do here is show support for Mike and Val Corral."

Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington State have passed voter initiatives permitting marijuana use under a physician's supervision. Hawaii enacted such a law in its legislature.

posted by West 7:58 AM