Pair Facing Drug Charges Claim Medicinal Need

After three surgeries, Camarillo resident Lisa Schwarz suffers chronic back pain that she says prescription drugs cannot ease.

Based on a doctor’s recommendation, the 43-year-old businesswoman turned to cannabis and began cultivating marijuana plants in her home earlier this year. She and her husband, Craig, 40, say the plants were intended strictly for medicinal purposes.

But Ventura County law enforcement officials don’t see it that way.

In July, the couple were arrested on suspicion of drug sales, after narcotics agents raided their Dewayne Avenue house and confiscated 68 pot plants. They each face two felony charges of possessing and cultivating marijuana for sale.

On Monday, prosecutors added charges accusing the pair of possessing opium poppies in their backyard. The Schwarzes have not been arraigned on the new charges but had pleaded not guilty to the other counts. A preliminary hearing is set for Dec. 1.

Attorneys for the couple say the charges fly in the face of Proposition 215, the voter-approved 1996 state law that allows patients to grow and use marijuana for personal use with a doctor’s recommendation.

They contend that Lisa Schwarz had a legal right to possess marijuana, after her neurologist suggested it would alleviate her back pain. They say her husband had a right to help her grow it, because he was her caregiver.

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“In the old days, it was marijuana equals arrest,” said J. David Nick, a San Francisco attorney representing Lisa Schwarz. “That’s not the situation any more.”

But Ventura County Sheriff’s Department officials contend that the couple had too many plants for one woman’s personal use and intended to sell marijuana.

“We are not arguing over the legal use of marijuana, we just don’t believe the amount we picked up was within that,” said Eric Nishimoto, a department spokesman. “People who grow marijuana for medicinal purposes grow two or three plants, they don’t grow 68. That’s a lot of pot.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Chris Harmon declined to discuss the specifics of the Schwarz case, but said the amount of marijuana seized is the critical issue.

“I think that is why we are all here,” he said.

The Sheriff’s Department arrested the Schwarzes on July 8 after receiving a tip from an informant that the couple were cultivating marijuana in their home. After a brief surveillance, Nishimoto said, authorities raided the house and found the plants and several growing lamps.

Ventura attorney Michael Mehas, who is representing Craig Schwarz separately, said the couple had posted three copies of the doctor’s written recommendation in their home. He said the officers disregarded her medical condition.

Nick said the confiscated plants were in various stages of development and not all producing usable amounts of marijuana. He said the couple had staggered the plants’ growth so Lisa Schwarz’s supply would be constant.

The attorney said his client and her husband, who have been married five years and own a small Camarillo printing business, are not suburban drug dealers but people who tried to follow the letter of the 3-year-old law.

Their case has drawn interest from medicinal-marijuana advocates from around the region. Several supporters came to Ventura County Superior Court with the couple Monday wearing matching green T-shirts emblazoned with the text of the so-called Compassionate Use Act of 1996.

“We could keep quiet,” said Long Beach resident William Britt with the Assn. of Patient Advocates, “but by speaking out maybe we can make a difference.”

The case is the first in Ventura County to test the boundaries of medicinal-marijuana use since the passage of Proposition 215.

A Simi Valley man was arrested earlier this year after police confiscated 13 pot plants. The district attorney’s office decided not to file charges against Dean Jones, 62, who had a doctor’s recommendation to use marijuana to alleviate symptoms of diabetes, high blood pressure and migraine headaches.

In 1998, the district attorney filed a civil suit against the owners of a Thousand Oaks medicinal-marijuana outlet that served about 60 patients suffering from AIDS, cancer and other illnesses.

A Superior Court judge ruled that the Rainbow Country cannabis club was operating illegally, and authorities shut it down. Co-owner Andrea Nagy appealed, but the appellate court upheld the decision.

Attorneys say the closure of Rainbow Country narrowed the options available to seriously ill patients, including Lisa Schwarz.

In early 1998, Craig Schwarz wrote a letter to Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury complaining that the closure eliminated his wife’s supply of marijuana and put her in intense pain.

“What are we to do now?” he wrote. “Prop. 215 states we have a right to obtain, our rights are being violated!”

Bradbury responded in a Feb. 5, 1998, letter: “I am sworn to uphold the law. Closing the business was my duty. If a higher court subsequently rules in Ms. Nagy’s favor or the Legislature acts to provide for a safe and reliable medicinal-marijuana delivery system, I will be pleased for you and your wife.”

Such a system may not be far off.

In July, a state committee of police officers, medicinal-marijuana advocates and doctors recommended that California establish a voluntary registry of patients to protect them from arrests.

The registry would make enforcement uniform, and patients would be issued photo identification cards that law enforcement agencies would recognize. The Department of Health Services would determine what constitutes a reasonable amount of marijuana.

In the meantime, Lisa Schwarz says she is trying to find alternative ways to deal with her medical condition.

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Her doctor’s note states that she has chronic pain and spasms in her limbs. She has begun taking Valium and other prescription drugs, but she complains that they make her sleepy and unable to work.

She said the criminal case has been emotionally devastating to the couple and her adult children.

“The whole family has just been torn apart,” she said.