Pubdate: Wed, 18 Sep 2002
Source: Capital Times, The  (WI)
Copyright: 2002 The Capital Times
Contact:  http://www.captimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/73

SANTA CRUZ OFFICIALS JOIN MEDICAL POT RALLY

Officials in the ultra-liberal seaside town of Santa Cruz may not be 
marijuana smokers themselves, but on Tuesday they became pot purveyors with 
a political cause.

In a display of defiance triggered by a recent federal bust of a local 
medical marijuana club, Mayor Christopher Krohn and numerous City Council 
members met outside City Hall to join workers from the Women's Alliance for 
Medical Marijuana in dispensing the drug to sick patients.

Several hundred residents filled the town's City Hall plaza to cheer 
speakers and throw an old-fashioned anti-government rally.

Santa Cruz Vice Mayor Emily Reilly said suppliers drew names from a hat to 
symbolically hand out pot prescriptions to a dozen patients who would have 
normally picked up their medication in private Tuesday. Each time the drug 
was dispensed, she said, the crowd went wild.

But Richard Meyer, a Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman in San 
Francisco, said he was not amused.

"We're dismayed that the City Council and the mayor of Santa Cruz would 
condone the distribution of marijuana," he said. "I don't know what they're 
thinking, but they're flouting federal law. And we here at the DEA take 
violations of the law very seriously."
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