2 GROUPS IN STATE SEEK DEA PERMISSION TO GROW POT

Applicants Cite Manufacturing, Medicinal Uses

WASHINGTON—Californians hoping for a cease-fire in the war on drugs are seeking federal permission to grow marijuana.

Potent marijuana. In bulk. And designed for distribution.

"We would like to have a quality source," explained Scott Imler, director of the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center. "The government’s marijuana has never been very good."

Imler’s group is one of two from California that have filed unusual drug-manufacturing applications with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Imler, based in West Hollywood, directs a program that provides therapeutic pot to 637 cancer, AIDS and other patients. The other applicant, a Northern California business using the name The Church of the Living Tree, wants to use marijuana plants as a raw commodity for hemp paper.

Both groups have put a lot of effort into their applications. Neither has unrealistic expectations for its chances.

"Whenever I call (the DEA) receptionist, she transfers my call to a man who transfers me to someone’s answering machine," said John Stahl, a Mendocino County resident who identifies himself as trustee of The Church of the Living Tree. "And they never get back to me."

The applications to become a legal "bulk manufacturer of marijuana," as the DEA puts it, expose another side of the evolving debate over marijuana. It’s a debate that resonates in California, where voters in 1996 approved Proposition 215 to allow medicinal use of pot. It’s also a debate about which some Central Valley residents have strong feelings, with some advocates hoping that the DEA grants the applications.

"I think it should have been done a long time ago," said John Lemos, a 52-year-old Hanford resident and former mortician who has AIDS.

Lemos says he uses marijuana to live—"If I don’t smoke marijuana, I can’t eat." He now grows his own, legally, with plants provided by a San Francisco cannabis club. He and other club members cheered a recent National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine report that concluded pot can help treat pain, nausea and severe weight loss associated with AIDS.

But the DEA retains its doubts.

DEA Deputy Administrator Donnie Marshall told a House panel last week, "I suspect that medical marijuana is merely the first tactical maneuver in an overall strategy that some hope will lead to the eventual legalization of all drugs."

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Lie About The Anti-Prohibitionist Movement; Lie About Marijuana; Lie About The Netherlands.
With A Little Lying About Me.

That response comes as little surprise to Carmichael resident Janice Bonser, a homemaker and self-described libertarian. She was wearing a hemp necklace bought at a Sacramento-area mall as she questioned the DEA’s ability to fairly judge the applications of groups like The Church of the Living Tree.

"I think they’re biased," Bonser said of the DEA. "If we found (marijuana) to be useful, they would be out of business."

The DEA does, in fact, allow some pot to be grown legally. In Oxford, Miss., a well-guarded laboratory has had a longtime contract to grow marijuana for the National Institute on Drug Abuse—while the lab’s director has a patent on a bullet-sized THC suppository.
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A Medical Marijuana Development That Bob Barr Would Be Qualified To Look Into
THC is the active ingredient in marijuana.

Other companies can import or manufacture drugs. An Inglewood company named High Standard Products, for instance, won renewed DEA approval in April to manufacture LSD, heroin, cocaine and a dealer’s black-bag full of other drugs—all for use as "analytical reference standards."

Stahl, however, also knows how particular the DEA can be. As owner of Evanescent Press, he’s been hand-making paper since the early 1970s. He favors hemp stalks for their strength and quality and is accustomed to using cast-off stalks provided by North Coast pot growers.

Several years ago, Stahl applied for DEA registration so he could grow his own industrial hemp. Though marijuana in name, this is useless for would-be partyers: Industrial hemp has less than 1 percent of the high-giving THC content, compared with 10 percent to 15 percent for commercial marijuana. Stahl installed the fences, lights, alarms and other requirements mandated by DEA.

"They put us through the paces," Stahl said. "They made us go through the full nine yards."

Following passage of Proposition 215, Stahl then proposed leasing plots to those growing medicinal marijuana. They’d keep the leaves and he’d use the stalks. Last year, the DEA said no.

So Stahl has paid another $875 application fee to support another, updated application. A DEA public comment period on the application ended last week. Imler, meanwhile, has been proceeding on his own track.