MEDICINAL POT USERS HONOR HALLINAN

Medical marijuana users and distributors say they are moving up - all
the way up to the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill, where they held a
banquet to honor their paragon of law enforcement, San Francisco
District Attorney Terence Hallinan.

A light herbal scent wafted up to the high ceiling of the historical
Venetian Room Friday evening, a table of potato chips and other
munchies was at the ready, and one guest wore a bud-emblazoned T-shirt
under a black blazer.

Then Hallinan, who has for better or worse championed medical
marijuana with perhaps more vigor than any other elected official in
the nation, was presented with an inaugural award that will heretofore
bear his name.

Members of the loose-knit San Francisco medical marijuana community,
who pitched in to pay for the event, said it was fitting to party at
the Fairmont. They said Hallinan, 62, was a major reason why users and
distributors had moved closer to the mainstrea and out of the closets.

"We're moving up in the world, huh?" said Jane Weirick, the director
of St. Martin's Dispensary, which delivers marijuana doses to needy
patients. "Terence showed that coming out with a stance favoring the
use of medical cannabis doesn't make you unelectable. That was a big
deal."

Hallinan and medical pot advocates have developed a close bond, and
Friday night was no exception. One speaker joked that the district
attorney should run for U.S. attorney general, while Hallinan called
the audience "heroes who have been in the trenches."

In 1996, Hallinan was the only district attorney in California to
endorse Proposition 215. The measure was approved by voters, allowing
patients with a doctor's note to legally possess and grow marijuana
for a variety of medical conditions. Recently, Hallinan favored a
Board of Supervisors measure that goes into effect next month and
allows qualified pot users to receive identification cards from city
health workers.

Hallinan sees medical marijuana as one battle in his larger fight to
chip away at "the whole insane policy this country has on drugs right
now." He has been alternately praised and slammed for diverting drug
offenders away from the correctional system and into treatment.

Friday, he said he was proud to lend his name to the award, which will
be handed out in the future to leaders of what organizers called
"common-sense drug policy." Hallinan was given $2,500, which he said
he might donate to a San Francisco mentoring and diversion program.

"These people are not criminals," Hallinan said, looking around at a
group of about 75 people that included Dennis Peron, who wrote
Proposition 215 and whose Cannabis Healing Center on Market Street was
shut down two years ago. A San Francisco Superior Court Judge ruled it
was a public nuisance, not a primary caregiver authorized to provide
marijuana.

Hallinan had fought to keep Peron's and other clubs open, and even
floated the idea of having city health workers pass out pot. "Most
district attorneys are still very anti-medical marijuana," he said
Friday. "I want to say to them, 'Don't you listen to the people who
elected you?' "

Peron, now a pot farmer and distributor in Lake County, told the
gathering: "This is the first-annual thank-you-for-not-busting-us
Terence Hallinan award."

Hallinan said he felt comfortable accepting an award and prize money
despite the involvement of some sponsors who may have had criminal
cases come before his office. Many of the same people were
instrumental in helping him win re-election in a tight race last year.
One of the banquet's primary sponsors, Richard Evans, was arrested in
1998 after San Francisco police raided his house and found his
marijuana stash. Charges were filed and then dropped, and then refiled
without Hallinan's knowledge, Evans said. After Hallinan learned the
charges had been reinstated, Evans said, he dropped them again.

"That was a legitimate medical marijuana situation," Hallinan said
Friday. "The fact that he helped give me the award after what I did is
fine."

"Terence has been behind so many people, not just one person," said
Evans, the director of the San Francisco Patients and Caregivers
Health Center, who believes he was set up by police. ''But if it would
have been handled by another district attorney, it could have come out
differently."