Medical Marijuana Backers Target D.A.s With Recalls

Paula Kamena would prefer to be a prosecutor, plain and simple, tackling any crime that dares to rear its head in tony Marin County. But these days, the district attorney of this famously liberal Bay Area enclave is finding herself a target.

Advocates of medical marijuana are irate over what they consider Kamena’s unsympathetic approach to patients on pot, and they want to oust the first-term district attorney from office.

The effort against Kamena, set to culminate in a recall vote May 22, marks the start of what medicinal pot supporters vow will be a groundswell push around California. Recall campaigns are being considered against district attorneys in five other small counties where those who approve of medicinal marijuana use believe they’ve gotten a bum deal since voters passed Proposition 215, the 1996 ballot initiative that legalized it.

Ever since, law enforcement officials up and down California have grappled with the vagaries of the landmark medical marijuana law, and the results have been anything but uniform.

Police and prosecutors in some parts of the state have given medical marijuana users a wide berth. Others, cognizant that federal law still criminalizes any use of marijuana, continued to hit hard against all but the most compelling medical cases. The law itself has been subjected to numerous legal challenges, and this year is set to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kamena’s boosters say she has been compassionate and fair, one of the few prosecutors in the state to adopt specific guidelines to help Marin police cull legitimate patients from drug dealers and recreational pot smokers.

“If you possess an amount consistent with personal use, we don’t prosecute,” Kamena said. “If you are a woman with breast cancer or an AIDS patient, we don’t prosecute.”

Since taking office, Kamena has pushed just one medical pot case to trial. Ten more remain in the pipeline, and 26 other defendants have struck plea bargains. An additional 37 cases were dismissed.

In short, Kamena said, Marin County is being forced to hold a recall--at a cost of $500,000--over a microscopic fraction of her trial load.

That medical marijuana became the centerpiece of the fight against Kamena is something of a fluke.

The recall was ignited last year by a group of parents angry over child-custody decisions in Marin courts. Their petition drive flagged, but medical marijuana supporters sensed an opening and revived the effort. They flooded area supermarkets with volunteers and hired professionals to land the signatures of more than 20,000 Marin residents on a petition.

Kamena has countered with the support of the Marin establishment. William H. Stephens, a retired Marin judge, castigated the ouster attempt as “political terrorism.” Marin Sheriff Robert T. Doyle said Kamena’s foes act as if “marijuana is totally legal and everyone qualifies--be it a hangnail, cramps, anything.”

Kamena called her foes “thuggish” and questioned the source of funds for the petition drive. “Are these the people,” Kamena asked, “who sell drugs to our kids?”

Lynette Shaw, founding director of the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana and a leader in the recall campaign, brushed aside Kamena’s insinuations.

Though recall advocates haven’t filed a campaign expense report, Shaw said she personally contributed $6,500, and most of the rest came from donation jars scattered around the community.

Shaw said limits set by Kamena--possession of at most six mature plants and less than one-half pound of dried marijuana--are too strict. She also contends that the district attorney’s guidelines have cultivated intolerance among police in Marin, where three of four voters supported Proposition 215.

“Paula Kamena gave the green light to the cops,” Shaw said. “They’re hassling these poor patients to death.”

Shaw sees them every day. The Marin Alliance operates the county’s only dispensary for medicinal pot out of a former doctor’s office in Fairfax, a free-spirited enclave at the foot of the west Marin hills.

The air is thick with the scent of dried cannabis. People trickle in--some in motorized wheelchairs, some weakened by the obvious effects of AIDS--to get baggies of pot.

In the past, Shaw said, police made it a point to call the alliance to check its registry of 1,300 patients before making a pot arrest. But that practice ebbed, she said, after Kamena won her seat in 1998. The result, Shaw said, has been what she considers unfounded arrests and the seizure of pot from scores of needy patients.

“Any district attorney who tries to subvert Proposition 215 doesn’t deserve to be in office,” Shaw concluded. “I hope this recall sets a precedent.”

Medical marijuana advocates are considering ouster efforts against top prosecutors in Placer, El Dorado, Sonoma, Shasta and Calaveras counties. The prime force behind that push is the American Medical Marijuana Assn., a nonprofit advocacy group that has assisted in Marin.

Jay Cavanaugh, the association’s Los Angeles coordinator and shepherd of the recall push, said he would prefer to avoid the ballot but sees no choice unless local district attorneys begin crafting compassionate regulations.

“Since the passage of Proposition 215,” he said, “it has been chaos.”

So far, the movement has focused on small counties, where a petition campaign can cost as little as $15,000.

In a few counties, pot proponents have attempted to build bridges to conservative anti-tax crusaders. Their pitch: Hauling pot patients into court hurts cash-strapped county governments, which also risk high-dollar civil judgments over mishandled prosecutions.

Efforts to craft legislation in Sacramento to provide universal certification cards for pot patients crashed in each of the past two years. A bill was reintroduced last week, but insiders say a big fight remains to win over scrupulously cautious Gov. Gray Davis.

The current law is “very poorly written,” Kamena said. Prosecutors all over the state “are screaming for some sort of consistency on this law.”