Seattle's march for marijuana today

Susan Kirkpatrick remembers how her mother suffered from severe nausea as she was dying of cancer. Kirkpatrick offered her marijuana, but her mother refused, because at the time it was illegal to use it for medicinal purposes.

At one point, Kirkpatrick said she slipped some marijuana into her mother's tea — and was amazed at the difference it made.

That memory of her mother's suffering brought Kirkpatrick to Seattle this morning from her home in Longview. Although she depends on a wheelchair to get around, Kirkpatrick joined a march from Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill to downtown to support liberalizing marijuana laws.

Kirkpatrick said she uses marijuana to ease the chronic pain caused by a degenerative bone condition. She says she's allergic to antibiotics and painkillers, so she drives to Tacoma or Bellingham to see a doctor who will approve her pot use. Although marijuana is legal as medicine in Washington, she's had trouble getting authorization.

"The doctors are so afraid, they won't touch it," she said.

The organizers planned to march to Westlake Park in downtown Seattle, where a rally was planned from 2 to 3:30 p.m.

The event coincides with similar "Marijuana Liberation Day" events in as many as 200 other cities nationwide, according to organizers.

Seattle's march was organized largely by people who use medical marijuana, and it coincides with the death of musician Timothy Garon. Garon, 56, died this week after complaining that he had been denied a liver transplant because he used marijuana to ease the nausea and abdominal pain associated with his advanced hepatitis C.

Organizer Vivian McPeak said the goal today is to "end the prohibition" on medical marijuana, eliminate jail sentences for nonviolent marijuana-possession charges and legalize the production of industrial hemp.

Marijuana activism is associated with hippies and the 1960s counterculture, McPeak said, but "the reality is, people from all walks of life support this law, people from all walks of life know people who need medicinal marijuana, people from all walks of life know someone who has been needlessly incarcerated" for marijuana use.

Several local political leaders are expected at today's rally, including City Councilman Nick Licata.

At Volunteer Park, an eclectic mix of people gathered — middle-aged people with long hair and tie-dyed shirts, families with children, groups of young people drinking Red Bull and smoking. The smell of marijuana wafted from a stand of trees.

Tirza Fortner was wearing a plastic marijuana-leaf costume. She uses marijuana for chronic back pain caused by a motorcycle accident she was in three years ago. She said she can't afford surgery that would fix the pain, so she got a doctor-approved authorization to use the drug as medicine.

She encouraged people at the event to go get their authorization so they could use the drug legally. "It's always possible in Washington state," she said.

On the outskirts of the rally, Margaret Denny, 57, rode in a wheelchair that her son had decorated with jail bars. She is fighting a drug-possession charge after an October arrest at her Maple Valley home. She said the police found more pot in her possession than she's allowed with her state authorization. They took her to jail in an ambulance. She said a 1979 car accident left her with various, painful problems with her hip and foot.

"I just think, what a sad waste of the taxpayers' money, putting the sick and the dying in jail or trying to arrest them," she said.

Emily Heffter: 206-464-8246, eheffter@seattletimes.com