Pubdate: Sat, 21 May 2005
Source: Summit Daily News (CO)
Copyright: 2005 Summit Daily News
Contact:  http://www.summitdaily.com/home.php
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/587
Author: Reid Williams, Summit Daily News
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

THE GRAY AREA ON MEDICAL GREENERY

SUMMIT COUNTY - Dave Schreiner was a church deacon and Boy Scout leader in 
Ohio for 25 years before moving to Summit County in 1999. Now, what 
occupies his mind - besides his wife, children, bills and the typical 
family travails - is growing marijuana.

Born with congenital defects in both femurs, Schreiner has been addled by 
pain since his teenage years. He has spent monthlong stints in the hospital 
in full-body casts. He has endured more than 20 surgeries, leaving more 
than a dozen rods, plates and pins affixed to and drilled into his bones. 
He even broke both femurs while in physical therapy. A lifetime of weak 
legs has also thrown his back out of alignment, requiring more doctors. And 
six years ago, he suffered a heart attack.

"I'm in constant pain, all the time," Schreiner said. "The surgeries are 
trauma."

The list of medications doctors prescribe to deal with the pain - and the 
conditions of which the pain is a symptom - is long and expensive. It 
includes slow-release morphine pills, the narcotic Oxycontin, epidurals and 
more. Some might question Schreiner's need for marijuana given his regimen 
of intoxicants, but he explains, "They make me sick if I don't smoke."

So, three years ago, he got his first medical marijuana card. Lacking space 
in their Summit Cove home, Schreiner's growing operation took root in the 
living room. He didn't like it, he says, as his older children couldn't 
bring friends over and he had to lie to his younger kids' friends and say 
they were tomato plants.

There was no fooling adults, though, and Summit County's Drug Task Force 
soon received a tip about "grow lights" glowing in the living room of 
Schreiner's house. It was a spring night, just over a year ago, as the 
Schreiner family was sitting down to dinner, when there came a knock at the 
door. Schreiner knew the officer - their children attended school together 
- - and was shocked when presented with a search warrant.

"They all had big guns," Schreiner said. "They said they got a search 
warrant based on the color of the high-pressure sodium lights they could 
see from the street. They pulled us out on the deck. I showed them my card 
right away. I thought they should have stopped right there, but they 
searched through the house anyway."

Schreiner's wife gave the task force a copy of Colorado's medical marijuana 
law. The officers retreated to confer with lawyers and the court. In the 
end, the Drug Task Force left after filming and recording Schreiner's 
apparatus and plants. "It was kind of odd leaving there empty-handed," 
Sheriff John Minor would later say. "We'd never encountered that situation 
before, and we really didn't know what to do."

To put it lightly, the intrusion irked Schreiner and his family. The 
neighborhood was talking about it, and the Schreiners worried about their 
children having to deal with it. His medical history, once confidential, 
now had to be offered as explanation and excuse. He feels the whole ordeal 
was unnecessary.

The Schreiners moved to Lake County within a few months. They found a 
bigger house - plenty of room for the kids, without having to play around 
dad's growing operation - and felt relatively anonymous. But Leadville 
police came knocking at the door a month later, showing their search 
warrant, looking for a drug dealer. Again, the Schreiners showed the 
medical marijuana card and a copy of the law.

"I'm pissed," Dave Schreiner said. "I feel like they should be able to do 
more background checks, more detective work to figure out that, 'Hey, we're 
going after the wrong guy.'"

His wife, Deb, added: "The only way we can protect ourselves is to go to 
them. And we shouldn't have to do that."

'Doug' Let's call this guy "Doug." Even though the state has given him the 
legal approval to grow and use marijuana for medical reasons, he's still 
not comfortable putting his name into the public domain. And when he's not 
afraid, he's just angry.

Doug used to be an airplane pilot, until the doctors diagnosed him with 
multiple sclerosis. As the disease has progressed, his employment 
opportunities have degraded, as his balance, overall wellness and vision 
have deteriorated. When his "attacks" are bad, for example, he goes blind 
in his left eye.

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disorder. The body, in biochemical 
confusion, attacks itself, mistaking healthy tissue and systems for foreign 
invaders. With Doug, the attacks of late manifest in the myelin, or 
protective coating, surrounding his left optic nerve.

The thing that seems to work best in fighting the attacks, the tremors and 
the rest is not, however, the doctor-prescribed injection of Avonex he 
takes twice a week. Nor is it the other Federal Drug 
Administration-accepted medications doctors suggest. The natural stuff 
works the best, Doug says.

He keeps to a painstaking diet, heavy on natural foods and gluten-free 
products. He doesn't drink or use tobacco. The injections help maintain his 
immune system, but he'll "turn to pot before anything the FDA has 
approved." He tries to stay even-keeled, as stress is the likeliest trigger 
for an attack.

It doesn't always work. He's getting divorced. He gets agitated thinking 
about all the money his parents must spend to support him, when all he 
wants is to be a productive man. So he sits in Summit Cove, watching 
History Channel documentaries, with all day to think, trying not to think 
because that's what starts the buzzing in his nervous system, wondering as 
he packs his marijuana pipe if this is the time when his vision in that 
left eye won't return.

To say he's occasionally possessed by fits of blind rage would be 
metaphorically, and literally, correct. But it wouldn't capture the irony: 
Lately, stress weighs on him like a jumbo jet, because he's afraid of 
police officers showing up at his door, taking away the thing that seems to 
help the best. Doug is one of Summit County's 15 residents with a medical 
marijuana card, and he's afraid of the county's Drug Task Force.

"There's a fine line between terrorism and tyranny," Doug said in a recent 
interview in the living room of his home, where there is a computer 
print-out of the Bill of Rights taped above the couch, the important 
amendments about freedoms and privacy within pointing range. "They both 
wear black masks."

Doug has watched over the past year as local law enforcement agencies have 
made headlines. It's the raids that scare him: Police holding a family at 
gun-point over a stolen car they had nothing to do with; a Frisco couple's 
home ransacked in a fruitless search for a meth lab; and marijuana growing 
operations seized - or not, in the case of at least two more false alarms.

Unable to take the stress and the uncertainty anymore, Doug went to law 
enforcement himself. He called on the sheriff, told him what he'd find at 
Doug's house and asked him point-blank if he had anything to worry about.

"They said they wouldn't be coming to my house," Doug said. "But I'm not 
sure I believe them."

Unknown to Doug at the time, some of Summit County's other medical 
marijuana patients were having similar lapses in faith.

The Catch-22 Colorado voters approved medical marijuana in November 2000, 
becoming one of 10 states in the country with some sort of law on the books 
allowing use of the illegal substance.

Colorado's Amendment 20 created a medical marijuana registry program, 
administered by the Department of Public Health and Environment. Under the 
law, a person (both adults and minors) can apply to be put on the registry 
with approvals from physicians who concur that the patient suffers from a 
debilitating condition (cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, spasms, seizures and 
chronic pain are among the approved) and that marijuana would provide some 
relief for the patient's specific situation.

The law states that patients with a valid medical marijuana card can 
possess up to two ounces of a usable form of marijuana (as well as the 
paraphernalia to use it). The patient can grow marijuana, with a total of 
six plants, three or less in the flowering stage. Caregivers, who go 
through a similar approval process and are listed on the card, are 
permitted to possess, obtain and grow for patients, as well.

The application includes a $110 fee (it was $140 when the program was 
created), not counting the costs for the medical visits and other 
evaluations that must accompany the application.

According to local card-holders, those costs can total as much as $1,200. 
The cards expire after one year and must be renewed.

What the law does not provide, however, is any knowledge about how to grow 
marijuana, advice or explanation on how to obtain it if not growing it, or 
the names of any people who could help with that. There is no information 
about whether different strands of the plant work better for different 
health conditions.

"If a person's not into that side of the world, how do they obtain it?" 
Schreiner asks.

Schreiner, who gained some horticultural experience studying forestry and 
botany, considers himself somewhat of a green thumb. It's obvious to him, 
and others, that the people who wrote Colorado's medical marijuana law 
aren't as knowledgeable. That's because, even with what he knows, the 
limitations on the number of plants means there's always a risk of running out.

Some people grow marijuana like any other garden plant - with potting soil, 
fertilizers and light. Some grow it hydroponically, using water as a medium 
for nutrients instead of dirt. Some grow it from seeds, others from 
"clones," cuttings or shoots from an already mature plant. As any gardener 
knows, numerous variables, which if not monitored regularly and attended 
to, can kill plants.

So, between the time it takes to grow a plant to maturity and the 
difficulty in nurturing plants in a mountain environment, a card-holder who 
grows the legal six plants might not get them all to produce sufficient 
quantities of marijuana.

"I could have 10 clones and might only have two of them survive to 
maturity," Schreiner says. "And when you're talking about a process that 
takes three to four months, that's a big gamble if it doesn't work out."

Doug is trying to get his growing system to the point where he can harvest 
from one plant every couple weeks or so, to avoid those gaps where he is 
not producing or runs out. He's not quite there yet, though.

He points to a mason jar containing dried and cured pot on his coffee 
table. There is a little under an ounce of bud. "But this is going to have 
to last me until mid-June," he says. "That's not going to work."

In cases such as this, if there are no other card-holders or caregivers to 
turn to, the patients are faced with a choice: Go without or go get it 
illegally.

Neither does the law address the fact that many people who would need and 
want medical marijuana and would qualify for a card don't have the 
resources or the physical ability to grow it.

Charlie (last name withheld by request) lives in Summit County, supported 
by disability payments. Like any other High Country resident, his living 
space is small and expensive. He doesn't have the space or the wherewithal 
to grow his own.

"I have to go to Denver and get it off the street," he said.

"They offered me any pill I wanted, but they wouldn't let me smoke my 
medical marijuana," he said.

Matteo's girlfriend, Betty, has watched as a police car has parked outside 
their condo and an officer surveys the area, sniffing the air.

She doesn't like the smell of the marijuana smoke, so asks Matteo to smoke 
on the porch, or blow smoke out the front door. She worries about riding 
with Matteo in the car, someone calling police because they see him 
smoking, and what will happen to her if the officer learns she is not 
listed on the medical marijuana card.

Their grower, Ben (last name withheld by request), lives in Boulder.

He moved out of Summit County, partly due to the space and cost issues, but 
also because his landlord tried to have him evicted and arrested when he 
found out Ben was growing marijuana.

The landlord threatened to call police so often, Ben says, he went ahead 
and called them himself. First, he says, a detective was very understanding 
and said there wouldn't be a problem. But when the detective went on 
vacation, a sergeant picked up the case and was prepared to come rip up the 
plants. In the end, once Ben had argued his points, the department decided 
it was strictly a civil matter between the tenant and landlord.

"The police need to be really educated on the issue," Ben said. "They've 
got it in their mind it's prelude to legalization, and they're against it. 
It's a mind-set."

In an ongoing case that began in Rifle, a judge is weighing charges against 
a woman whose home was raided by the Two Rivers Drug Enforcement Team. 
Officers seized 131 marijuana plants; her caregiver status allowed her to 
have up to 30 plants, and the woman claims that only 20 of the plants were 
viable.

Despite provisions in the medical marijuana law that order law enforcement 
agencies to wait for a judge's decision when medical marijuana plants are 
seized, the drug enforcement team destroyed most of the plants. The task 
force commander and an officer admitted under oath in the proceedings in 
9th District Court in Glenwood Springs that they knew they were violating 
the law, but that putting the plants in evidence storage to rot posed a 
health hazard.

"This is very difficult for us," said Summit County Sheriff John Minor. 
"It's something we're still trying to understand."

The sheriff points out that, in taking his job as the county's top law 
enforcement officer, he swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of his 
country and the state of Colorado. The problem is that, while Colorado's 
Constitution has authorized medical marijuana, the federal government has 
not. Just as medical marijuana card-holders are given no instruction on 
dealing with the gray area in the law, Colorado law enforcement agencies 
are left wondering what to do themselves.

The sheriff's ambiguity doesn't help the card-holders relax. They worry 
about being put on a "watch list," or having their names sent to the Drug 
Enforcement Agency (Minor says he can't give that information unless 
federal agents ask for it). They are forced to take risks, the card-holders 
say, any time they travel out of Colorado to another state that doesn't 
have a medical marijuana law.

This contradiction could also be having a direct effect on participation in 
Colorado's program. In addition to concerns about the gray areas in the 
law, the state reports that many doctors are reluctant to recommend or sign 
off on medical marijuana because of the discrepancy between state and 
federal laws.

"It just doesn't make sense," says Matteo's girlfriend Betty. "It's not 
illegal but you can't buy it on the street. We can go to California to get 
some where it's legal, but can't be in the states between here and there. 
Who says, 'You can't have your heart medicine because you're in Ohio?' And 
when you're already in a compromised position - like blind, in a wheelchair 
- - and you have to take more risks, it's scary. Very scary."

In a case argued last year before the high court, a California woman sued 
the government after federal agents confiscated marijuana plants from her 
yard. The Supreme Court decided against medical marijuana distributors in a 
case four years ago that sought protection from federal laws. This case 
will determine if agents have the authority to pursue cases against 
individual patients in states with legalized marijuana. The court could 
rule on the case as early as Monday.

An involuntary advocate Federal agents might come looking for Dave 
Schreiner, and he's afraid of that, but he can't stand idly by anymore. He 
knows there are other people out there like himself - in pain, in fear and 
running out of time - and they shouldn't have to be. So he's starting a 
support group.

Schreiner says he's met too many people who have relatives that would 
qualify for medical marijuana, but they don't know how to get information 
about it. They're embarrassed to ask their doctor or worried about the 
stigma if the neighbors find out.

No one should have to go through what he's gone through with police, he 
says. He wants to make sure that current card-holders can learn how to 
grow, know where to get the materials and, if they can't, can get in touch 
with someone who can grow for them.

Schreiner says people with disabilities and health conditions need support 
from their peers. Such a group would give them a chance to vent, share 
stories and learn about new treatments or medicines. There's also a 
shortage of information about the different medicinal properties of various 
strands of marijuana, he says.

It's an idea that's already piquing the interest of card-holders.

"It's a good idea, especially up there," says Ben, who's forming a group of 
fellow veterans in Boulder to push for legalizing growing marijuana. 
"People need to coalesce and educate the community. Otherwise, the cops 
will just keep busting people and let the courts sort it out."

Schreiner wishes he didn't have to do this. He worries about the stigma 
affecting his children once his picture is in the newspaper.

The legacy he wanted to leave them was not medical marijuana reform. But 
now he feels as though maybe this is what he was meant to do.

"There has to be a reason why I spent all this time in church, in Scouts, a 
reason why I'm going through all this pain," he said. "The reason is 
because I'm supposed to bridge the gap. I'm not going to hide anymore. This 
is my quest."

For more information on a medical marijuana support group, contact 
Schreiner at (970) 389-2107. 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake