HUERFANO COUNTY — Mike Stetler is proud of his garden. It took him months to get the lush jungle just right.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said.

A decade ago, the labor of planting would have been impossible for Stetler. Strung out on Demerol, OxyContin, morphine and oxycodone, the pain-addled Navy veteran was, he says, “a slobbering zombie, stupid and living in la-la land.”

Since 2002, though, when he started growing and smoking the medicinal marijuana he now tends so carefully, he hasn’t touched a pill.

“The pain isn’t all the way gone, but I can live again. I can get out of bed. The sun is shining on me again,” he said. “See what God does? He gives us something beautiful to use. This healing herb. And what happens?”

What happened is sheriff’s deputies landed a helicopter on his land, broke open two padlocked gates and ransacked his trailer, ripping a gaping hole in the roof. They seized 44 marijuana plants and more than eight state-issued medical-marijuana cards that indicate other medical-marijuana patients have told the state he is their designated caregiver. They left a search warrant hanging over Stetler’s medical-marijuana sign.

Almost eight years after Colorado voters approved Amendment 20, engraving in the Colorado Constitution the lawful use of doctor-recommended medical marijuana for those “suffering from debilitating medical conditions,” police and prosecutors zealously pursue medical-marijuana growers such as Stetler, citing everything from the fact that they just don’t like the law to concerns about public safety and confusion over what the law allows.

The law is “overly broad,” “a work in progress,” “vague” and “a mistake,” according to cops and prosecutors along the Front Range, home to more than three-quarters of the state’s 3,302 residents enrolled in the Colorado medical-marijuana registry program. There are 12 states in the U.S. that have medical-marijuana laws. Of the 10 with marijuana card systems, Colorado is the only state that does not issue caregivers like Stetler licenses that specifically allow for cultivation.

“Marijuana cultivation is a violation of federal and state law. Just because someone says ‘medical marijuana’ doesn’t mean we automatically back off and we don’t enforce the law,” said Larry Abrahamson, district attorney for Larimer County, where more than 45 percent of felony marijuana cases in the past decade have involved growers, many with state-issued cards. “Just because we have Amendment 20 does not mean we have free marijuana for everyone.”

Raid, but no charges

Tucked into a lonely corner of 7,755- resident Huerfano County, Stetler has nursed 33 new marijuana plants from the sandy soil. Good medicine, he says, squeezing sticky, stinky and crystallized buds atop listing 7-foot stalks.

His plants are growing on private land miles from a paved road in two sheds posted with 13 state-issued medical-marijuana certificates that designate Stetler is now a licensed care giver for 13 patients. His doctor has advised he needs 15 plants to alleviate his constant pain stemming from a 1990 car accident.

Since the raid more than a year ago, Huerfano County Sheriff Bruce Newman has not filed any charges or returned Stetler’s plants. No visits from police. Not even a ticket or a letter. Newman said he’s waiting.

“We want to see what happens with some of these other cases,” said Newman, who suspects not all of Stetler’s 44 plants were legal and has destroyed them. “There’s a lot of legal stuff up in the air, and it’s going to take judges making decisions to figure it out.”

The amendment seems to be functioning for people who use and distribute medical marijuana. Eleven storefront dispensaries operate openly in Colorado, some distributing medical marijuana to as many as 600 patients who need as much as an ounce of the weed a week. More than 500 doctors have recommended marijuana, and the number of patients on the state’s registry has almost doubled since January.

“I’d have to say it is working,” said Denver attorney Warren Edson, who represents half of the state’s dispensaries. “But the dispensaries are not cultivating, and there’s a huge need. The cultivation side is problematic.”

Indeed, for the green-thumbed suppliers of the statewide demand for thousands of pounds of medical marijuana, life is not good. While Amendment 20 outlines a host of protections for medical-marijuana patients and allows them to designate a caregiver, the law does nothing to address growers.

So though many medical-marijuana patients designate growers as caregivers, the marijuana farmers are subject to arrest-first, ask-if-it’s-medical-later SWAT raids. They face lengthy and costly legal battles, which, regardless of an acquittal, dismissal or conviction, end with dead marijuana plants.

“The police are supposed to be protecting me from thieves and such, but they are the thieves,” said Stetler, who is one of three designated caregivers in Colorado preparing a civil lawsuit demanding compensation for plants destroyed by police.

“It’s not right. They are making up their own laws and mocking the state’s laws they are supposed to be protecting. They are mocking the voters they serve.”

“Where do they think all the medical marijuana for more than 3,000 patients comes from?” said marijuana farmer Chris Crumbliss, who has been raided twice in Larimer County despite possessing dozens of state-issued medical-marijuana cards from patients listing him as their primary caregiver. “Do they want one person growing for 50 people, or do they want 50 people growing on their own?”

Law rubs wrong way

For police, Amendment 20 conflicts with federal laws and long-held state laws prohibiting cultivation of marijuana.

Even worse, say police, Amendment 20’s requirement that all property and plants seized in a medical-marijuana investigation “shall not be harmed, neglected, injured, or destroyed” is unworkable. (If a cop waters a marijuana plant, is she breaking the law?)

And the notion that marijuana — which the federal government considers a “Schedule I” substance alongside PCP and methamphetamine — can be legal at all dismisses decades of law enforcement culture and ingrained drug war doctrine.

Larimer County’s Jim Alderden is a folksy sheriff who refers to Amendment 20 as an “ill-conceived law” and aggressively pursues marijuana growers. They may call themselves licensed caregivers, but he calls them “dope dealers.”

“Wholesale drug dealers are hiding under the umbrella afforded them by the statute,” he says. “These people are nothing more than dope dealers, and they are hiding under this thing, and we are not going to back off. These people who say they are caregivers providing for 60 to 70 people are running the same sort of scam you see on the West Coast where people see a physician who is willing to prostitute themselves for money and say ‘here’s the dope.’ ”

Scott Carr, the regional director for Colorado’s THC Clinic in Wheat Ridge, disagrees with Alderden’s assessment of doctors who recommend marijuana. Carr says the doctors in his clinic care for their patients and advise the best treatment for their ailments.

“We do a pretty extensive screening of medical history. We get charts and copies of doctor notes,” Carr said.

Jeff Sweetin, head of Denver’s branch of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, regularly hears growers pleading their product is medical marijuana. When the operations “reach into hundreds of plants and millions of dollars, that argument that they are immune because of state medical-marijuana laws is absurd,” Sweetin said.

“I think it was a mistake. It’s bad public policy, and it put cops in a terrible spot,” Sweetin said of Amendment 20. “The very term ‘medical marijuana’ doesn’t hold much water. I mean really, what kind of medicine do you smoke?”

Sweetin fields calls “all the time” from Colorado cops begging his help when a court orders the return of marijuana or growing equipment.

“Ninety-nine times out of 100, our answer is, ‘This is not our problem to fix.’ I feel for these guys and they are my friends and they are partners, but it is not the position of the DEA to rescue everybody from their state’s legislation.”

A need for clarity

If there’s one thing cops, prosecutors, attorneys and growers agree on, it’s that more work is needed to lift the fog surrounding Amendment 20 and its implementation. How it’s going to get done is the big question.

Last month, Crumbliss stood trembling with his arms held high in his front yard at 4 a.m., his boxers pulled to his ankles, his head and face wrapped in a T-shirt, a laser-scoped assault rifle trained on his chest and his dogs howling from a shower of tear gas. He kept saying one thing over and over: “I have a license to grow medical marijuana.”

The armored men behind the guns were Larimer and Boulder county sheriff’s deputies in a multi-jurisdictional, predawn SWAT-team raid of three of Crumbliss’ homes. After months of investigation — which included no-subpoena-needed access to Poudre Valley Rural Electric Association electrical usage reports from Crumbliss’ and neighbors’ homes — the raid netted 200 marijuana plants and 25 pounds of cannabis. Crumbliss and his wife, Tiffany, were arrested and charged with a host of felonies that could land them in prison for almost a decade. It was the second time in two years Larimer County cops have raided the Crumblisses, who have never hidden their predilection toward medical marijuana.

“I thought I was going to be executed,” said Crumbliss, a father of two and a perpetually grinning marijuana farmer who holds more than 40 state medical-marijuana licenses from patients who list him as their primary caregiver. “I’ve never had a felony in my life. I preach love and compassion. I really believe what I’m doing is legal and I am following the letter of the law. And it’s an honor and a privilege to stand up for sick people who can’t stand up for themselves. It might earn me a spot in jail, and it might earn me a place in heaven.”

Sean McAllister, the attorney who represented Crumbliss against his previous and still-pending marijuana cultivation charges from 2007, called Larimer County’s “smash and grab” tactics “the worst abuse I’ve ever seen by police of the medical-marijuana law because they are arresting first and determining if it’s medical later.”

McAllister, the founder of Sensible Colorado, a nonprofit advocating for drug policy reform, said the writers of Amendment 20 made too many compromises and growers like Crumbliss are left in the law’s “gray areas.”

“You can smoke it. You can dispense it. But how are they supposed to grow it?” said McAllister, a Breckenridge attorney who specializes in medical-marijuana cases. “Unfortunately the Crumblisses are the guinea pigs who are going to have to test the legal status of Colorado’s medical-marijuana laws.”

Prosecutions increase

Larimer County, which medical-marijuana attorney Rob Corry calls “the worst” in its pursuit of medical-marijuana caregivers, is not alone in its hunt for marijuana farmers. Across the state, prosecutors in recent years have pursued more cases than ever against growers who argue they are within the bounds of Amendment 20. Last year, prosecutors in El Paso, Jefferson, Denver and Larimer counties — home to nearly half the state’s medical-marijuana patients — tried 72 felony cultivation cases, up from nine cases in 2000.

Part of the issue is public safety, said Lynn Kimbrough, spokeswoman for Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey. She explained a litany of potential hazards involving the unregulated business of marijuana growing operations: fire danger from high electrical use and indoor grow lamps, price gouging, the safety of the product and the potential dangers facing future residents of a house where marijuana was grown.

“There is no mandate in our office to go out and aggressively prosecute caregivers or growers, but we are not going to look the other way,” Kimbrough said. “I think (district attorneys) would welcome some more attention to this because there is a sense that there is some work that still needs to be done to clarify the process and perhaps regulate the business aspect and ensure the safety of the people for whom this law was meant to help.”

Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com