Pubdate: Wed, 16 Apr 2003
Source: Tri-Valley Herald (CA)
Copyright: 2003 MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
Contact:  http://www.trivalleyherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/742
Author: Michelle Meyers

BOY DREAMER BECOMES POT ACTIVIST

Phillip Mol Founded Medical Marijuana Dispensary In Hayward

HAYWARD -- When Phillip Mol was a boy, he dreamed of becoming a physicist 
or an astronomer, not an advocate for patients of medical marijuana.

"I never thought I would be the guy trying to change things," said Mol, who 
founded the Helping Hands Patients' Center, a downtown cannabis dispensary.

But after he overcame heroin addiction -- on top of severe manic-depression 
- -- Mol's career goals took on a higher calling, he said.

Mol, 41, is a leader in the local effort to legalize Hayward's three 
downtown dispensaries under city code. His business, opened in October 
2001, is aimed at offering cannabis patients an efficient, comfortable 
setting, with some of the lowest prices in the Bay Area, he said.

"Some people do it just for the patients," said Jane Weirick, a Hayward 
resident and president of the Medical Cannabis Association. "Phil is a 
terrific example of this."

But Mol's broader mission, one he calls "Green and Sober," is to help 
spread the word about the use of pot to treat the addiction of harder drugs.

"Pot saved my life. It's saving others' lives," he said.

Pot is by no means a cure for drug and alcohol addiction, and is hardly an 
ideal solution, Mol said. But for those who continually fail attempts to 
clean up through abstinence, a cannabis-only regime can be life-changing, 
he said, as it was for him.

"It gets you out of the endless cycle of drug addiction," he said.

Mol, who grew up in Southern California, said he turned to drugs at an 
early age as a way of coping with his abusive, now-estranged father. 
Without a high school diploma, he joined the Navy in 1979, studied physics 
and graduated with honors from the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program in 
Orlando, Fla.

The Navy diagnosed him with bipolar disorder, although Mol said he denied 
it for years and used drugs to cope. He was discharged in 1983 and 
eventually worked as a physics technician at Stanford Linear Accelerator 
Center until a mass walkout in opposition to weapons research.

In the mid-1980s, he returned to the Riverside area and worked in the 
private sector, doing land survey maps used by civil engineers and urban 
planners, among other things.

In 1992, through participation in Alcoholics Anonymous, he stopped using 
drugs for two years.

"I was sober, but I was not treated," he said. "All of a sudden, it all 
fell apart."

Mol later was arrested in San Francisco for possession of heroin and was 
able to convince a judge and a probation officer to let him enter a program 
in which he would be given methadone as a way of getting off the heroin.

Mol said he also underwent therapy and used pot; the routine urine tests at 
the methadone clinic didn't screen for cannabis, he said.

"In 14 years of 12-step attendance, I had two years of clean time," he 
said. "During eight years of Green and Sober living, I have had eight years 
of staying off hard drugs, IV drug use and alcohol abuse."

In addition to helping Mol with the addiction, the pot helped him keep down 
his regular pharmaceutical drugs used to treat his bipolar disorder.

"Before I was able to stabilize my life on this regime, I was often 
suicidal, often barely employable, and a shut-in who hid in his trailer for 
days on end," he said.

Weirick said Mol's ideas about treating addiction with pot are becoming 
more accepted, although they're not mainstream.

"Anything that helps people get off hard drugs is a good thing," she said.

Mol, who lives in Oakland with his wife of 11 years, came to Hayward as a 
patient of the first dispensary, the Hayward Hempery, then owned by Bob 
Wilson, one of the region's medical marijuana pioneers.

Upset with the Hempery's new ownership, Mol decided to give patients 
another choice by opening his own dispensary. Despite the later opening of 
a third dispensary, his patient base has grown to about 50 customers a day.

Mol said he's not making any money, lives in "a security fortress," has had 
to give up privacy, works countless hours, and lives with the constant fear 
that "any time, the knock (of federal officials) could come on the door."

Marijuana is considered illegal under federal law, although the passage of 
Proposition 215 made it legal for medicinal uses in California.

But what makes it all worthwhile, Mol said, is patients like a woman with 
cancer from San Jose, or the man with a thrashing disorder, who can 
function in society because of the pot.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth