In Asheville, the medical marijuana legalization movement is ramping up. But does it really stand a chance?

by Jess McCuan and Cassady Sharp . photos by Matt Rose and Naomi Johnson

For years, people didn’t take Jean Marlowe seriously. Or rather, they took her story seriously, but they didn’t think her cause—legalizing medical marijuana—had a chance in North Carolina. Now, it might.

In 1986, Marlowe, who’s 58 and lives in Tryon, fell and crushed her left knee. She took prescription drugs to recover from the injury, but then came a constellation of symptoms including joint problems, muscle spasms and low back pain. She was misdiagnosed several times—doctors thought she had multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis—before an Asheville doctor diagnosed her with porphyria, a nervous system disorder that can cause everything from seizures to depression to heart trouble. She also has degenerative disc disease, and she’s lived for years with muscle spasms and pain. She says the only thing that helps is marijuana, and she reacts badly to other drugs. In 1995, she got a letter from the Social Security Administration giving her the okay to use marijuana. But since it is illegal to use cannabis for medical (or any other) purposes in North Carolina, she and her husband, Steve Marlowe, have been arrested a handful of times by federal and local authorities for possessing and growing it.

For more than a decade now, Marlowe has been speaking out about weed. She’s done TV spots and made YouTube videos and held rallies on the Polk County courthouse lawn. “People are trying to ease their suffering,” she says. “We’re not criminals, and we shouldn’t be treated like it.” In 2003, she helped start the Woman’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform, and in 2008, she formed the North Carolina Cannabis Patients Network. She regularly meets with politicians, attorneys, injured veterans, and terminally and chronically ill patients who would benefit from medical marijuana use.

Last year, she and other advocates convinced Democrat Earl Jones of Greensboro to introduce House Bill 1380, which would legalize cannabis use for people diagnosed with debilitating medical conditions like cancer, multiple sclerosis and AIDS. It would also license distributors and dispensaries. Fourteen states have similar laws, and Susan Fisher, a Democrat who has represented Buncombe County in the General Assembly since 2004, was a co-sponsor. The bill languished in the Health Committee for more than a year, and it was effectively killed when the Assembly adjourned last month.

But now, with a handful of lawmakers and local advocacy groups throwing new support behind it, the push to legalize medical marijuana in North Carolina is gaining momentum. In May, Marlowe moved the North Carolina Cannabis Patients Network from her house in Tryon to an office on Haywood Street in downtown Asheville. An anonymous donor said she could use the space for free for a year. Later this month, she and Asheville attorney Ben Scales will appear before the Land-of-Sky Regional Council, a multi-county government planning and development organization, to make an economic case for medical weed.

After legalizing medical marijuana, cash-strapped states like California and Colorado are jumping in on a “green rush” of tax collections from medical marijuana dispensaries. In Oakland alone, a city auditor projected that four marijuana dispensaries will generate $17.5 million in sales in 2010. Marlowe says the city of Asheville stands to make at least $550,000 a year in medical dispensary sales taxes. Using a formula provided by NORML, the Washington-based National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, she estimates that medical marijuana sales would generate more than $60 million in taxes for North Carolina in just one year. On the commercial side, she’s been approached by everyone from bakers to organic ice cream makers who are ready to incorporate cannabis into their products. “A lot of our patients are old, in their 80s, and they’re not comfortable smoking something,” she says. “If they can have a cannabis tea or a cannabis tincture, they won’t be suffering with arthritis or strain. They can have their medication and float right on down the street.”

In January, after meeting Marlowe, Asheville attorney Jennifer Foster also decided it was time to speak out. Foster, who graduated with honors from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, quit her job as pro bono coordinator at Pisgah Legal Services to spend most of her time lobbying for marijuana legalization (she runs a small private practice on the side). After a few frustrating trips to Raleigh, she’s started educating people on all aspects of marijuana law, including their search-and-seizure rights. “The feds refuse to look at the law at all, and I thought—why?” she says. “They thought medical marijuana was a ruse toward full legalization, but the medical situation is actually urgent.” In late June, she founded the first North Carolina chapter of NORML, and a few weeks ago, she launched a write-in campaign for Buncombe County District Attorney. She’s running on a platform of, among other things, “ending marijuana prosecutions.”

Efforts to legalize medical marijuana can create strange bedfellows. The likeliest backers are progressive Democrats. But libertarian types and Tea Partiers also rally for decriminalization. Erika Franzi, a stay-at-home mom who lives in Weaverville, was the leader of Asheville’s Tea Party until June. She stepped aside to play more of a “watchdog” role, she says, and she’s now a paid party employee. Franzi’s nine-year-old son has Crohn’s disease, an intestinal inflammation that can cause intense abdominal pain. Because he sometimes needs an appetite stimulant, a cannabis-based medicine would be ideal for him, she says. And yet she’s forced to give him chemicals instead—which she thinks is absurd. “There just is no valid argument outside the societal stigma that it’s a recreational drug… I’m sure there are lots of churchgoers who use painkillers,” says Franzi, who attends church in Haw Creek. “How many church groups argue against Percocet? There’s no moral argument against [marijuana] for medicinal purposes.”

In Asheville, even church-going grannies are getting behind the cause. Carole Antun, who’s 76, founded Grandmothers for Hemp when she was just shy of 70. A painter and an ordained minister, the West Ashevillean regularly speaks to church groups about the value of consuming and farming cannabis. “All the herbs are meant for the service of man,” says Antun, who decorated her bong with pastel hemp-oil paints.

When the General Assembly reconvenes in Raleigh next January, lawmakers will have to reintroduce a medical marijuana bill. Marlowe feels certain that both a representative and a senator will do so, and she believes the bill will have a fighting chance. Scales, the Asheville attorney who authored the bill, is cautiously optimistic. “The wind is at our back now instead of at our face,” he says. And Foster notes that state budget shortfalls make the legalization case more compelling.

But Franzi is skeptical. “If [Ashevilleans] populated the General Assembly, it would pass,” she says. “But the rest of the state is not on board…Maybe a few years down the road.” Barbara Howe, the state chair of the North Carolina Libertarians (who’s running for a state House seat this fall), is also doubtful. “The facts are there, but the General Assembly just won’t look at them,” she says.

Patsy Keever, who’s running for a House seat from Buncombe’s District 115 in November, says people do seem less moralistic about medical marijuana these days. And they’re starting to recognize the value of a new cash crop. “It seems to me it’s a much more practical thing, and people will be willing to look at it seriously now,” she says. Her husband of 34 years, John Keever, died of prostate cancer in 2003 and would have been a good candidate to take medical marijuana, she says. “I don’t know that it will pass,” she says, referring to a potential bill in 2011, “but we are getting closer.”