JERRY BROWN GETS TOUGH ON MEDICAL POT CLUBS

California Attorney General Jerry Brown has ordered a crackdown on
medical pot clubs that are selling the drug for big profits.

The move puts the state a bit more in line with the feds in dealing
with the explosion of questionable marijuana dispensaries since the
passage of Proposition 215 more than a decade ago.

The first target was Today's Health Care club in Northridge (Los
Angeles County), which agents from the state Bureau of Narcotic
Enforcement raided over the weekend. The club owner and an alleged
middleman were booked on drug-dealing charges.

Brown said Tuesday he would "not be surprised" to see similar raids
here in the Bay Area.

"The voters wanted medical marijuana dispensaries to be used for
seriously ill patients and their caregivers - not as million-dollar
businesses," Brown said.

In recent years, pot club raids have been conducted mainly by federal
authorities who don't recognize Prop. 215, the initiative California
voters passed in 1996 to let patients use cannabis to treat what
ailed them. Although medical marijuana is still illegal under federal
law, the feds say many of their targets were actually sham outfits
that were dealing marijuana for, shall we say, nonmedicinal uses.

This week, Brown issued an 11-page directive laying out guidelines
that medical marijuana cooperatives must follow to comply with Prop. 215.

Among them: Sell only to legitimate patients. Operate as nonprofits.
Buy pot only from fellow cooperative members at prices that cover
cost, as opposed to professional growers out for big bucks.

"We are not out to harass legitimate clubs," Brown said. "The targets
are those clubs that are part of a larger criminal operation where
medical marijuana winds up being sold on the street and contributing
to crime and violence."

Some medical marijuana dispensers, concerned that thuggish dope
dealers are giving their business a bad name, welcomed Brown's
guidelines - and the state crackdown.

"It's something many activists have been looking for since the
medical marijuana law passed," said Kevin Reed of the Green Cross
marijuana collective in San Francisco.

He said his outfit had nothing to fear. "We are a nonprofit," Reed
said. "We only sell to patients. We only get our pot in small
quantities from patients who grow it and sell it on consignment.

"We've been on the front page of every major newspaper in the nation
and have never been bothered by the feds, because we are an open
book," Reed said.

As for how many of San Francisco's 26 pot clubs might find themselves
in hot water, Reed said: "I expect about 10 will not be with us within a year."