POLICING POT CAFES IS REALLY THE CITY'S BURDEN

Oakland is one of the Bay Area's only big cities with a cottage industry
growing right next door to City Hall. But in this case, some city officials
are unwilling to let the market decide.

A small community of medical marijuana clinics has emerged in the past year
along Telegraph Avenue in downtown Oakland, creating an alternative -- and
questionably legal -- health-care district known to the locals as "Oaksterdam."

Some of the clinics are in the nondescript buildings along the avenue, but
others, like the Lemon Drop on Telegraph Avenue and the Bulldog Cafe on
Broadway, operate as public cafes with one notable difference: Some shops
feature private areas that are accessible only to members carrying
city-issued medical pot cards.

Five years after the City Council passed the nation's first medical
marijuana ordinance, sanctioning the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative to
operate under California's medical pot law approved by voters in 1996,
Oakland City Hall has developed a slight drug problem.

After the city's lone pot club was shut down by the feds, as many as a
dozen medical marijuana outlets have sprouted in the Uptown area around it,
with handy access to the 19th Street BART station. The original pot club
still has a role: It has issued thousands of ID cards to people that it
says presented the requisite notes from doctors prescribing pot for medical
reasons.

"Originally, we approved a single entity to provide medicinal cannabis, and
now we have more than 10 businesses," said Council President Ignacio De La
Fuente. "I believe that most of them are not selling it for medicinal
purposes. "

City officials pledged to regulate the ordinance when they approved it in
1998, but anyone who spends 15 minutes in the cafe district would see that
while there is a hefty presence of grim-faced security guards, city
oversight is dicey at best.

Every day, people come and go from the cafes and clinics like any other
retail district, but there is a weird, edgy feel to the place. Teen-agers
and young adults linger at the fringes like underage drinkers outside a
liquor store.

While I was there last week, enjoying a cup of coffee and talking with Fat
Cat Cafe owner Mario Pacetti, a carload of teenagers pulled up to the curb
and a young woman in tight-fitting clothes popped out and headed to a
nearby cafe. She emerged later, engaged in a verbal row with Pacetti, then
returned to the shop and caused a minor scene.

"I buy weed here all the time!" she exclaimed, in an effort to support her
complaint.

The cafe owner, who would not give his name, tried to defuse the situation
and eventually persuaded her to leave.

The merchants' efforts to keep a lid on the situation, and Pacetti's
frustration with systemic abuses that threaten the district, have led to
the creation of the Uptown Merchants Association to strengthen business ties.

But the city's turnabout from enacting an open-door policy to suddenly
treating pot-club operators like lepers is off-base.

No matter which side of the medical marijuana debate you fall on, it's
difficult to sympathize with Oakland city officials now crying foul and
whining about pot clubs taking advantage of the spirit of the city's
ordinance to operate an illegal business.

The Oakland council vote in 1998 came as agents from the federal Drug
Enforcement Administration had begun raiding pot clubs across the state in
a challenge to the California law.

In its zeal to support the state law and challenge federal intervention,
the city passed a well-intentioned but poorly designed ordinance that put
the city ahead of the curve in the nation's pot wars -- and marijuana
activists responded to the city's red carpet treatment.

With a legal sanction to operate, pot clubs trickled into town like water
flowing to the lowest point.

Staked out in a van somewhere in downtown Oakland, federal drug agents, who
cannot confirm or deny it, are chuckling softly into their voice-activated
communication devices.

Of course medical-marijuana advocates, who are obviously more organized
than City Hall, took advantage of the legal loophole. They ran through it
like an NFL running back.

But it is blatantly unfair to lay the blame on the club operators for
setting up shop in the only city in the nation that passed a law to allow
it. The city is the one that has dropped the ball.

De La Fuente said he will initiate discussion of the pot clubs as a public
health and safety issue at Tuesday's city council meeting.

Councilmember Jean Quan, who plans to tour some of the cafes, favors
relocating a few of them closer to other health-care facilities. De La
Fuente wants to close all but one that would fall under strict city control.

There is something disingenuous, or as a beat cop who patrols the area put
it, dishonest about the whole darned thing.

If the city supports the disbursement of medicinal marijuana, it needs to
get serious about making sure it's done according to the city's ordinance,
with more scrutiny of cafe operations and checks to make sure that ID cards
issued by the cannabis collective are valid.

Blaming the cafe owners for a problem the city created is a real cop out.