San Francisco — Kevin Reed launched his medical marijuana business two years ago, armed with big dreams and an Excel spreadsheet.

Happy customers at his Green Cross cannabis club were greeted by "bud tenders" and glass jars brimming with high-quality weed at red-tag prices. They hailed the slender, gentle Southerner as a ganja good Samaritan. Though Reed set out to run it like a Walgreens, his tiny storefront shop ended up buzzing with jazzy joie de vivre. Turnover was Starbucks-style: On a good day, $30,000 in business would walk through the black, steel-gated front door.

Today, the 32-year-old cannabis capitalist is looking for a job, his business undone by its own success and unexpected opposition in one of America's most proudly tolerant places. Critics in nearby Victorian homes called Reed a neighborhood nuisance. Although four of five San Francisco voters support medical marijuana, the realities of dispensing the contentious medicine have proved far more controversial.

Drug enforcement agents raided the Everett headquarters of an advocacy group for medical marijuana patients, confiscating what police documents say was more than 1,000 plants and computers that the owners say contain personal information of about 200 men and women authorized to use the drug for medicinal purposes.

Long a thorn in the side of law enforcement for his vocal, thumb-in-the-eye advocacy style, Sarich, 56, insists that the government is merely harassing patients -- himself included -- who have a legitimate right to use the drug for managing pain due to multiple sclerosis, cancer and a host of other illnesses.

That’s where the Pot Provost comes in. Let’s call him Roland, a composite of several helpful young men (and the occasional woman) I’ve had the pleasure to meet here at the Farm (only for research, officer, I swears it). If Roland were lazy, which comes with the territory, then he’d have been kicked out of several dorms for stupid mistakes (“That? That’s just a lamp.”), whipslashed from Roble to Cedro to Manzanita, perhaps even expelled for a year. If Roland were greedy, he’d have moved from semi-legal drugs to quite illegal drugs (the kind that gives you nosebleeds and supplements anorexia), smoked-snorted-ingested his own stash, become paranoid that the cops are onto him — which they are. But Roland is smart, kind, quick to grin. He only sells to his friends, and you are his friend, because to know Roland is to love him. Calling him a drug dealer seems so drab; calling him a criminal is simply bad manners. For a hyperactive, heavily-caffeinated, type-A culture like ours, Roland is Doctor Feelgood, giving you a mandatory dosage of Chill-The-Fu¢k-Out. Unlike Santa Claus (that fascist), Roland doesn’t care if you’ve been naughty or nice. Roland, like anyone with half a brain, knows that the good things in life come in shades of gray.

In 1996, California passed the Compassionate Use Act (Proposition 215), granting physicians the authority to recommend weed for "any . . . illness for which marijuana would provide relief." For eight years, the typical state-sanctioned cannabis consumer, of whom there were about 30,000, was a gravely ill patient. But no longer. Thanks to recent clarifications of Prop 215 (and a U.S. district court injunction protecting pot docs), the threat of arrest has nearly vanished. Since 2004, an estimated 250,000 new "patients" have discreetly boarded the brownie bus, many of them enthusiasts who pay up to a few hundred dollars a year for doctor's notes that permit them to buy rarefied weed at a cannabis club. The doctors' "recommendations" ostensibly combat such ailments as insomnia and headaches. One pioneering pot doc wrote notes to "treat" stuttering, writer's cramp, and corns.

For pot smokers with careers to protect, the license to ward off cops (and bypass dealers) is a strong incentive to buy doctor's notes. "I'm too old to start a police record," says "Chris," a 35-year-old e-commerce senior developer. "A lot of my close friends now have the get-out-of-jail-free card."

"It used to be that physicians only wanted the wheelchair patients," says Jean Talleyrand, 39, an Ivy League–educated pot doc in the Bay Area. "But now that the movement has gained traction, the landscape is different. A surprising number of our patients are highly successful young professionals who would simply rather sidle up to a bong than a bottle."

U.S. drug agents launched raids on 11 medical-marijuana centers in Los Angeles County. The U.S. attorney's office says they violated the laws against cultivation and distribution of marijuana. Whatever happened to America's federal system, which recognized the states as "laboratories of democracy"? The U.S. government says its drug laws trump the states' laws, and in 2005, the Supreme Court agreed. This is not the way it was supposed to work. The constitutional plan presented in the Federalist Papers delegated only a few powers to the federal government, with the rest reserved to the states. The system was hailed for its genius. Instead of having decisions made in the center -- where errors would harm the entire country -- most policies would be determined in a decentralized environment. A mistake in California would affect only Californians. New Yorkers, Ohioans, and others could try something else. Everyone would learn and benefit from the various experiments. It made a lot of sense. It still does. Too bad the idea is being tossed on the trash heap by big-government Republicans and their DEA goons. Drug prohibition -- like alcohol prohibition -- is a silly idea, as the late free-market economist Milton Friedman often pointed out. Something doesn't go away just because the government decrees it illegal. It simply goes underground. Then a black market creates worse problems. Since sellers cannot rely on police to protect their property, they arm themselves, form gangs, charge monopoly prices, and kill their competitors. Buyers steal to pay the high prices.

James and Lisa Masters were preparing to take their daughters fishing on the morning of Aug. 2, 2006, when two social workers and two police officers knocked on their door.

"We were just finishing folding laundry, getting ready for the day," says James, "and we had just recently medicated."

They had picked a bad time to take their medicine. Both of the Masterses are medical marijuana patients, whose doctors recommend they get high to treat various physical and neurological illnesses.

The social workers raised allegations of child abuse and neglect toward the Masterses' daughters, ages 4 and 6. The police officers, who the Masterses were told came along in case the parents got violent — perhaps in a fit of reefer madness — smelled the weed.

Inside, the Masterses had 18 marijuana plant clones and an imminent harvest of 12 2-foot-high, bud-laden plants, which they say were for people suffering from glaucoma, cancer, HIV, multiple sclerosis and other crippling diseases.

The Masterses' home was serving as the Larimer County chapter of the Colorado Compassion Club, a statewide network whose members provide quality weed for medical marijuana patients, including themselves. Though the couple had doctors' recommendations for the medicinal crop, as allowed through a state constitutional amendment, the Larimer County Drug Task Force snagged the pot — and Child Protection Services snagged the Masterses' daughters. They were separated from their parents for nearly two months before being returned with no neglect or abuse charges.

[Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles', D-Seattle' Senate Bill 6032] would permit patients or caregivers to pool resources in growing marijuana ("We could have a P-patch"). She would ensure that patients who are able to produce authorizing paperwork would not be arrested. She would add conditions, including Hepatitis C, where marijuana can be prescribed.

On Tuesday, April 10, 2007, THCF Medical Clinics and I, Paul Stanford, received a federal grand jury subpoena from the Drug Enforcement Administration and Assistant US Attorney James P. Hagarty. A federal grand jury is or will be empaneled for an investigation directed by Assistant US Attorney Hagarty. The subpoena says that the grand jury will meet at the United State Courthouse, William O. Douglas Building in Yakima, WA at 9:00 am on May 15, 2007. I am "COMMANDED" to appear and "COMMANDED to bring with you the following document(s) or object(s): * ..."

This subpoena says, "Provide the below described documentation pertaining to the following named parties: ," This subpoena then names 17 people from Oregon and Washington state, along with each person's date of birth. After the list of names, the subpoena continues: "Any and all documents including, but not limited to : * Documentation of Medical Authorization to Possess Marijuana for Medical Purposes in the State of Washington; * Medical Statements and or Reports; * Correspondence; * Reports of any violation and or termination of the Authorization; * Written Applications."

The subpoena says, "You are required not to disclose the existence of this request. Any such disclosure could impede the investigation being conducted and thereby interfere with the enforcement of the law."

I believe this requirement violates my right to free speech and is contrary to my life's work and The Hemp & Cannabis Foundation's goals to end adult marijuana prohibition, restore industrial hemp and help medical marijuana patients.

We can not disclose any patient's identity. Our obligation to protect our patients' privacy is a sacred duty.

We shall fight against this subpoena and for patients using medical marijuana until we prevail. THCF's attorney, Ann Witte of Portland, is preparing a motion to quash (or dismiss) this subpoena. Due to our duty to maintain patient privacy and conflicting federal laws protecting medical patients' privacy and empowering grand juries, our lawyer believes this issue will ultimately be decided by the US Supreme Court. When we file the motion to quash this subpoena, we will hold a press conference in Yakima announcing our opposition to the federal government's continued war on sick and dying patients who benefit from medical marijuana.

THCF has now helped over 18,000 patients in five states obtain a medical marijuana permit under their state's medical marijuana law. This is the first time we have ever received a federal subpoena. THCF Medical Clinics currently sees patients in Portland, Bend and Medford, OR, Seattle and Spokane, WA, Honolulu and Hilo, HI and Denver, CO. We will open medical offices this year in San Francisco and Los Angeles, CA and Las Vegas and Reno, NV.

The Hemp & Cannabis Foundation is a 501C3 nonprofit organization with several projects. In addition to THCF Medical Clinics, THCF has produced 400 episodes of our live weekly TV show, Cannabis Common Sense, and prints a newspaper called Hemp News. Cannabis Common Sense is on cable TV in Portland and Salem, OR, in Seattle and Spokane, WA, in Denver, CO, and is also available on the Internet on YouTube. THCF maintains medical gardens that give free medicine to indigent patients. THCF produces cannabis-related events and sponsors other hempfests. THCF contributes to other organizations' efforts to help patients who benefit from medical marijuana, contributes to other groups working to end adult marijuana prohibition and contributes $500 each month to UNICEF for AIDS orphans in Africa.

THCF has an affiliated 501C4 political committee, Campaign for the Restoration & Regulation of Hemp, or CRRH. CRRH's goal is also to end adult marijuana prohibition, restore industrial hemp and help medical marijuana patients.

We shall overcome!

Please support our efforts. Thank you.

Yours truly,
D. Paul Stanford
www.hemp.org
1-800-723-0188

While smoking marijuana is never good for the lungs, the active ingredient in pot may help fight lung cancer, new research shows.

Harvard University researchers have found that, in both laboratory and mouse studies, delta-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) cuts tumor growth in half in common lung cancer while impeding the cancer's ability to spread.

The compound "seems to have a suppressive effect on certain lines of cancer cells," explained Dr. Len Horovitz, a pulmonary specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

Thomas said he would have gone further in the other direction and said high school students did not have free-speech rights. In 1969, amid the Vietnam War, the high court sided with students who had worn black armbands as a protest. The court said then that students "do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." That ruling came in Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent School District. Chief Justice Roberts cited that phrase with approval today, but Thomas, speaking only for himself, said he would overrule the Tinker decision.