OAKLAND POT CLUB READY TO REOPEN

Ruling Allows Sales For Medicinal Purposes

Gloria Little Moon, a 43-year-old Oakland diabetic with AIDS, became the
Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative's sixth member when it opened in 1996
to dispense cannabis under Proposition 215, the state's medicinal-marijuana
initiative. Little Moon was upset when the club was forced to shut down two
years later by a federal judge's order. Now, she has reason to rejoice again.

The club may reopen as soon as next week because of the same judge's
decision this week to allow the distribution of cannabis to seriously ill
patients who could "suffer imminent harm" without marijuana, have a proven
medical necessity for the drug and have no other legal alternative.

"I'm not really shocked," Little Moon said of the club's reprieve. "It's
survived through a lot."

She and her late husband, Matthew Little Moon, were among the club's first
members. Yesterday, she and a friend, Fernando Topete, 36, of Oakland
showed up at the downtown Co-op Shop -- the club's incarnation as a center
for hemp products -- so Topete could get an identification card.

Jeff Jones, 26, the cooperative's executive director, said yesterday that
his staff will be carefully screening its 2,500 members -- and other people
expected to show up at his door -- to ensure that they qualify for
medicinal marijuana under U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer's new ruling.

In 1998, Breyer, agreeing with the federal government that federal law
superseded Proposition 215, barred the Oakland club, two in San Francisco,
and one each in Santa Cruz, Fairfax and Ukiah from distributing marijuana.
Of those clubs, only the Fairfax and Ukiah clubs remain open.

Until the Oakland club reopens "in the very near future," Jones said, he
was busy taking pictures for identification cards and looking for a new,
larger place for the club.

Jones and his supporters had thought they would have had to wait for months
for a decision on whether the case against the club would go to a jury trial.

Instead, Breyer ruled Monday in the club's favor, agreeing with a September
decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals that the government had not rebutted
the group's evidence that cannabis is the only effective treatment for many
seriously ill individuals.

"We were taken off the track by this coming down so fast," Jones said. "I
will say I feel vindicated."

The government has until the end of next week to decide whether to ask the
Supreme Court to review the appeals court decision.

"We're going to continue to fight," Jones said. "We can't see walking away
from people who need our help."

The Co-op Shop is just a shadow of the bustling cooperative it once was. It
is on the same block where the club had been in a nondescript building on
Broadway, where in May 1998, employees kicked out an undercover Drug
Enforcement Administration agent clad in a "cannabis" shirt.

Oakland officials have been far more solicitous of the club, naming Jones
and his employees as city agents to protect them from prosecution and
declaring a public-health emergency to recognize the need for cannabis.

As a hemp store, Jones sells everything from hemp blue jeans and sweaters,
to ginseng root drinks with hemp seed, to hemp dog bowls. In the back of
the first-floor shop is a spot for massage therapy.

The shop's front counter offers copies of Breyer's ruling amending his
injunction, fresh strawberries and oranges and a "Legal Defense Fund" jar
filled with dollar bills.

Members of the club said Jones may be close to prevailing in a protracted
legal fight during which seriously ill patients have died or gone to jail
because of the controversy over marijuana.

"The club provides a service that is needed, and somebody needs to do it,"
Topete said. "Jeff is the right person. You couldn't find anybody better."