CLUB OWNER TO RESUME MARIJUANA SALES

He Says He Wants To Help Terminally Ill.

Three years of probation ended last week for Steven Joe McWilliams, and the
medical marijuana activist isn't wasting any time testing the limits of law.

He plans to resume providing the pain-relieving but illegal drug to
terminally sick patients in San Diego this Sunday, even though federal
agents have been cracking down on cannabis clubs across California.

If McWilliams makes good on the pledge he delivered at the San Diego City
Council meeting Tuesday, his Shelter from the Storm cannabis club will
become the only place south of Los Angeles - other than the street - that
deathly ill patients can get marijuana.

"Our intent is to make their last days and moments on this earth a little
more gentle," he said.

McWilliams, 47, was arrested in Valley Center in 1998 on felony charges of
growing and transporting marijuana, activities he claimed were legal under
Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act of 1996.

But faced with up to four years in prison, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor
cultivation 14 months after his arrest.

The three-year probation order he received in lieu of prison specifically
forbade McWilliams from distributing marijuana. But that condition did
little to stem his activism.

Rather than dispense the drug, he set up a collective garden and taught
patients to grow their own. The coffee house/cannabis club he now runs
offers a place for patients to smoke, but not share, their marijuana. He
will provide the herb on Sunday afternoons only with supplies from his
personal garden. He plans to charge $5 a gram - an amount he says is well
below market rates and barely enough to cover expenses.

"This is not something we're doing to make money," said McWilliams, a
medical marijuana patient who suffers chronic pain resulting from a
motorcycle crash. "We're doing it because no one else will."

Rod Johnson of Chula Vista, a 62-year-old chemotherapy patient who said he
is dying of prostate cancer, wandered into the club last week in search of
an alternative to buying marijuana from strangers. He said the drug reduces
nausea and other side effects of the cancer treatment.

"On the street, it's not a good place to buy it," he said. "You get ripped
off, and you can't do anything about it."

It remains to be seen how local and federal law-enforcement officials will
greet this latest cannabis club, which has opened and closed under several
formats - and addresses - in recent years.

The state code allows patients to grow and smoke marijuana for medicinal
purposes, but does not specify how many plants are allowable or how
medicine is to be transported. No fewer than eight other states have
adopted similar laws, all of which conflict with federal drug rules, and
courts have yet to resolve the disagreements.

In the meantime, major marijuana clubs in San Francisco, Oakland and Los
Angeles have all been raided by federal agents and shut down. Smaller clubs
still operate in Los Angeles and the Bay Area.

San Diego police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said they
enforce all laws, state and federal. But both agencies hedged when asked if
they would stop McWilliams from providing marijuana at his 33rd Street club.

"Our job is to enforce the law, plain and simple," said Donald Thornhill
Jr. of the San Diego DEA. In the same conversation, however, Thornhill said
his office has more pressing challenges. "The reality is we don't have the
time to focus on that level of traffic," he said.

Three years ago, San Diego police dismantled the Hillcrest club run by
McWilliams, saying 400 plants for fewer than 10 patients was too many. The
group reopened in Kearny Mesa months later, but the landlord threw them out
when he learned what they were growing.

Another cannabis club in Hillcrest was allowed to remain open until April
2000, when police moved in and put the California Alternative Medicinal
Center out of business. Charges in that case were eventually dismissed.

McWilliams moved his cooperative garden to Normal Heights in late 1999, but
that center fizzled when the building owner became worried about breaking
the law.

Shelter from the Storm no longer grows marijuana on-site. Also, McWilliams
was appointed to a city task force studying how to make Proposition 215
work. Those changes satisfied the Normal Heights landlord, and McWilliams
moved back into the same offices last month.

Police have mostly left McWilliams alone since the Hillcrest raid, in part
because prosecutors refused to file charges. They even returned grow lights
and other equipment seized three years ago.

Local governments across the state have been moving forward with policies
to implement the 1996 law, albeit largely independent of one another.

In February, on the same day federal agents raided a San Francisco cannabis
club, the San Diego City Council approved plans to issue identification
cards to medical marijuana users. Up to 3,000 AIDS, cancer and other
patients here may begin applying for the I.D. later this year.

"It took the city five years to form a task force, and we've done more in
the few months we've been in existence than the city or the county ever has
in bringing the issue forward," task force chairwoman Juliana Humphrey said.

The task force has taken no stand on McWilliams' plan to start providing
medical marijuana to dying men and women. But Humphrey said she supports
the effort.

"Anybody who wants to help terminally ill people, certainly the (state) law
allows that," said Humphrey, who gets several calls each week from doctors
who want to prescribe marijuana and patients who want to smoke it.

Dale Gieringer, who runs the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana
Laws office in San Francisco, said he frequently receives calls from San
Diego residents hunting for places to find medical marijuana.

"I tell them to call Steve McWilliams," he said. "I always have."