Club Pot Med

"Everyone just wants something we can use," he says.

Meanwhile, Hiatt is back in the minivan, shooting north on Highway 99 to see another patient in a pickle. But there's more news on the cell phone, about an employee at the Evergreen State College, shitcanned after revealing his status as a medical marijuana patient. He was, according to Hiatt, fired for being under the influence.

Philip Dawdy

Inside the "bloom room" of a medical marijuana grow operation in metro Seattle.

Details

Seattle Hempfest The 15th annual cannabis-policy-reform event is Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 19–20, at Myrtle Edwards Park. Free. www.hempfest.org.

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More About

• Jon Graves
• Exhibit Hiatt
• Douglas Hiatt
• Psychoactive Drugs
• Medical Marijuana

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"Messy and ugly and a disaster?" Hiatt says to the attorney on the other end of the line. "Of course, it's my kind of case. It's the kind of thing I get all the time."

Hiatt's taxable income in 2005 was $26,700 in grant money, less income than when he was a public defender. The grant comes from the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington, D.C.–based reform group principally funded by Progressive Insurance founder Peter Lewis. Hiatt sometimes supplements that with standard criminal-defense work. He's clearly made some money—he owns six guitars, including two Giffins, custom-built six-strings, and rents a home with his girlfriend in Green Lake.

But eight years after medical marijuana became legal in Washington, weed is still a touchy issue in medical circles. Officials at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center wouldn't make doctors available for an interview. And it took a week of badgering before the University of Washington Medical Center and the UW-run Harborview Medical Center would discuss policies on medical marijuana.

Scott Barnhart, medical director of Harborview, says that medical marijuana hardly ever comes up as an issue on Pill Hill and that it's rarely recommended by physicians.

"You're kidding?" says Hiatt. "Has he ever seen the Madison Clinic?" That's a Harborview-run AIDS clinic. "There are tons of patients there, and most of them use marijuana."

By his own estimate, Hiatt reckons he's worked as many as 100 medical marijuana cases in the past three years, often negotiating with prosecutors to get charges dropped against chronically ill patients.

"I don't know how many people I've represented who are now dead," he says, referring to many AIDS patients. "You sure don't choose work like this. It chooses you. Things are screwed up. It's Chinatown."

pdawdy@seattleweekly.com