No tie-dye, no little dancing-bears bumper stickers (some Deadhead is going to have to explain that one to me sometime), no Cheech and Chong records. He's a hard-working family man with three kids. In fact, Dana is a — gasp — Republican.

He has had a long, successful career as a truck driver. He did try pot about 25 years ago. Since then, he'd never touched the stuff. Up until a couple of years ago.

Nine years ago he was injured in a work accident. He was pinned underneath a tractor. It crushed his sciatic nerve. The result was pain, massive chronic pain. Unmanageable pain.

In nine years, he has endured 10 separate surgeries to alleviate the pain and reconstruct his body. All to no real effect. Every imaginable narcotic pain drug was prescribed: Demerol, OxyContin, Percocet and morphine. Twice, morphine pumps were installed into his body. He even tried the drug that contains the active ingredient found in marijuana; that just gave him headaches.

He described the pain as feeling like his body was on fire, constantly. It was so debilitating, he considered suicide. Not the example he wanted to give to his kids.

In 2000, the people of Colorado passed an initiative allowing the medical use of marijuana. After trying everything else, Dana's doctor suggested he try medical marijuana. He was put on the registry and grew his allowed number of plants.

It didn't cure his pain. But he says it is the best relief he has found, and it allows him to manage his pain and function.

So everything was working just fine for about a year and a half, until one day six months ago when a joint DEA-Arvada police task force of around 20 officers, guns drawn, sirens blaring, came to confiscate his handful of plants and growing equipment.

Dana showed the feds his medical marijuana permit. The response, "we don't care." His equipment, his plants were seized by the DEA. Dana was forced back on his ineffective cocktail of narcotics.

So ridiculous was this bust, the Arapahoe County DA wisely refused to bring any charges against May.

Thanks to the lawsuit pushed by attorney Rob Corry and the mounting bad press, the DEA returned the equipment to Dana Thursday morning. But it will take Dana the better part of six months to grow his plants back. That's nearly a year in total without the pain relief he prefers and has a legal right to.

So this entire exercise was a victory for whom? Certainly not May, who was visibly in pain the two times I met with him personally for my radio and TV shows. Not the DEA, which spent resources chasing a guy with six plants instead of going after true drug traffickers. Not the city of Arvada police, who were called away from working on real crime.

And now those on the medical marijuana registry can have the anxiety of worrying if they are next on the DEA hit list. Those who want to legitimately join the registry will be more prone to skirt the law and use pot illegally, which gets to the whole point of the law in the first place.

But the real loser in all this is the state of Colorado. Apparently our law doesn't matter to the feds. Hell, it doesn't matter to local law enforcement and judges.

In order to get permission to ransack May's house, the DEA had to secure a warrant from a state judge. So either warrants are given out like grocery-store coupons, this judge wasn't given all the information by the cops, or the judge is disregarding the law.

I don't know if Arvada's cops are reimbursed by the DEA for loaning them equipment and manpower for this bust. But it really doesn't matter; it is still our tax money

Let me make it clear; I am not extolling the virtues of medical marijuana. I can't tell you if it is the best way to manage pain or reduce nausea from cancer treatments. But I can tell you that the people of Colorado created a legal means for guys like Dana May to choose the treatment he did.

You don't have to be pro-pot or even pro-medical marijuana to demand that the federal government respect our state law. You don't have to even like the medical-marijuana law to expect our judges and law enforcement to respect it.

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 Originally appeared in the September 5th, 2004 issue of the Boulder Daily Camera.

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