Nikkel, 47, uses marijuana for relief from the spasms and other debilitating effects of multiple sclerosis. She has pretty much kept word of the medication to herself, she said, because of the stigma that surrounds marijuana and because of the chance that narcotics police might appear at her door.

But she said a load's been lifted since the county's top law enforcement officials last month adopted guidelines that allow patients with physician approval to grow or possess a specific amount of marijuana. That amount, up to 3 pounds per year, is substantially more than is permitted in most other California counties.

Five years after state voters approved marijuana-as-medicine by passing the ambiguously worded Proposition 215, the new county rules seek to resolve uncertainty. The rules were written for the benefit of patients who have feared arrest and confiscation, and of police left by a legislative vacuum to decide how much marijuana a patient reasonably needs to grow or possess.

The county guidelines "give some added protection for my family," said Nikkel, who uses about three grams of cannabis a day, either eaten in baked goods or inhaled through a vaporizer. Unable to grow her own marijuana, she gets it from a caregiver who grows it.

Nikkel said the county's guidelines are a hopeful sign that the culture is slowly accepting that whatever else marijuana is, the much maligned, much mythicized plant is good medicine for many seriously ill people.

She said she is not a pothead but a regular person who developed a serious illness and who uses cannabis because it stops her muscle spasms, relieves the pain caused by misfiring nerves, helps her sleep, stimulates her appetite, calms her anxiety and provides her a natural alternative to pharmaceuticals.

"If I have to have MS, I'm just grateful I'm in Sonoma County," she said.

Russian River resident George Quarles, who grows the marijuana he smokes for relief from the pain of a bad hip and knee and the lingering effects of a car crash that nearly killed him, said the guidelines have him feeling both grateful and relieved.

With the enactment of the guidelines, Quarles, 51, no longer has to worry about law enforcement officers coming onto his property, deciding he has too many plants and plucking some of them out.

He said the combination of Proposition 215 and the county rules gives him the peace of mind of knowing that if deputies were to come onto his land, they would find him in compliance with the law and leave his plants alone.

"I don't want to be a criminal; I feel like a law-abiding citizen now," he said.

He acknowledges that he smoked marijuana recreationally for years before he was hurt -- first in a football game three decades ago that mangled his knee and then in a 1998 traffic collision near Rohnert Park in which his injuries included 22 bone fractures.

Mostly, he said, the marijuana "lets me forget that I hurt."

Quarles said his life has been better because of the relief he gets from marijuana, and is far better now that the Sonoma County guidelines legalize his garden.

The guidelines emerged from talks among Mullins, Sonoma County Sheriff's officials and members of the Sonoma Alliance for Medical Marijuana. The central objective was to arrive at a quantity of marijuana that would ensure that a patient had a sufficient supply, while at the time assuring police or deputies that a garden is not large enough to justify suspicions that it is in fact a black market, for-profit operation.

Over the years since voters approved Proposition 215, law officers in the county have on occasion ripped out some of a patients' plants after concluding that the crop was larger than necessary. In a pair of highly publicized cases, Mullins' office prosecuted the operators of large-scale growing operations that provided marijuana to medicinal buyers' clubs.

The new rules, approved last month by the Sonoma County Law Enforcement Chiefs Association, seek to provide guidance and to discourage large growing operations by assuring patients and small-scale caregivers that they can grow reasonably sized gardens without fear of police trouble.

At the suggestion of the Sonoma County advocacy group, Mullins and the law enforcement chiefs agreed not to limit gardens to a small number of plants, as is done in most other counties. Because the yield of usable marijuana can vary greatly from plant to plant, the guidelines state that a doctor-approved patient may grow as many plants as necessary -- to a limit of 99 -- to produce 3 pounds of dried and processed marijuana.

Also to help guide patients and police, the Sonoma County rules specify that the leafy canopy of an acceptable marijuana garden may cover no more than 100 square feet.

"We want to make this work," said Sheriff's Lt. Bruce Rochester.

When deputies are drawn to a crop of marijuana by a citizen's report or a sighting from an airplane, he said, the guidelines will help them determine if it is in fact being grown as medicine.

Sheriff's officials and the Alliance for Medical Marijuana recommend that patients have on hand their doctor's permission, and that caregivers growing marijuana for a patient or patients be able to identify those patients.

Rochester observed that most of the marijuana grown in Sonoma County is not medicine but is illegal and grown for profit, often on forested property owned by people or agencies that don't even know it's there. Of 45,000 plants confiscated by deputies last year, he said, only about 2,000 were purported to be grown as medicine.

Mary Pat Beck of the the Alliance for Medical Marijuana said the county guidelines aren't perfect. Beck, a Cazadero resident who cultivates an outdoor marijuana garden with her husband, a cancer survivor, said the rules don't acknowledge that some people, such as her husband, need more than the allowed 3 pounds per year.

Despite that, she said, the guidelines are a tremendous step forward.

"This creates a safety zone for many, many patients," she said. The advocacy group estimates that about 1,000 Sonoma County residents have physician approval to use marijuana.

Said Beck, "I'm really hoping this promotes better relations between patients and officers."

Note: Medical marijuana users grateful to Sonoma County for spelling out rules.

You can reach Staff Writer Chris Smith at: csmith@pressdemocrat.com

Source: Press Democrat, The (CA)
Author: Chris Smith, The Press Democrat
Published: June 12, 2001
Copyright: 2001 The Press Democrat
Contact: letters@pressdemo.com
Website: http://www.pressdemo.com/

Related Articles & Web Sites:

Sonoma Alliance for Medical Marijuana
http://www.farmacy.org/samm.html

Medicinal Cannabis Research Links
http://freedomtoexhale.com/research.htm

County Sets Rules for Medical Marijuana
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9767.shtml

Clubs May Shift Focus To Home Cultivation
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9730.shtml

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