GOING LEGAL

S.F. Pot Dispensary Is Acquiring Mainstream City Permits

The San Francisco Patients Resource Center is loaded with the stuff of a
normal pot club. There are little Zip-loc bags of medicinal marijuana,
bottles of tincture of liquid pot, hash oil and papers.

But these are not just joint-rolling papers. They are bureaucratic documents.

In what officials believe is an unprecedented step for a medical marijuana
dispensary, the club at 350 Divisadero St. in Hayes Valley is requesting
business permits from the city.

"We are the first group I know of in the United States of America to ask a
city for the various permits that any legitimate business must have," said
Wayne Justmann, the center's director. "We want official recognition."

The Fire Department has inspected the center. Club managers have met with
police, sheriff's deputies and aides to the district attorney. They have
letters of support from Supervisors Gavin Newsom and Mark Leno.

The center is applying for a nonprofit business license. It already is
tax-exempt, because it is sponsored through St. Ephraim's House of the
Orthodox Catholic Synod in San Francisco.

Earlier this month, the Planning Commission approved the pot club's
application for a permit to change the use of the space from "retail sales"
- - the zoning for the cabinet maker that used to be there - to "medical
marijuana clinic."

"They are a legal use in that space," said Isolde Wilson, a city planner,
who could not re member a pot club ever requesting a permit.

The building permit comes with several restrictions. The staff must prevent
patients from loitering outside during business hours. Notices must be
displayed at all entrances, urging clients to enter and exit quietly. No
littering is allowed. There must be a lobby.

If, as expected, the permit is approved by the Department of Building
Inspection, the marijuana dispensary must appoint a community liaison to
hear neighborhood concerns, and report back to the Planning Commission in a
year to determine if the restrictions should be altered.

While "marijuana dispensary" as a legitimate business may sound like an
oxymoron, given that pot is illegal under federal law, medicinal cannabis
is legal under California's Proposition 215.

Marijuana buyers' clubs were shut down under former state Attorney General
Dan Lungren. But current state Attorney General Bill Lockyer said last
March that medicinal marijuana distribution could proceed in the city if it
was done discreetly.

A spokesman for Lockyer said yesterday it is unclear whether the pot club
is making itself any more legitimate by getting the official stamp of
approval from San Francisco.

"Everything in California is sort of unique to California," said spokesman
Nathan Barankin. "The state law is contrary to federal law, and no amount
of permitting can fix that."

Legislation to clear up ambiguities in Proposition 215 - such as who is
eligible to hand out pot prescriptions - has been proposed by state Sen.
John Vasconcellos, D- Santa Clara, and approved by the Assembly's Health
Committee.

Not everybody thinks having a marijuana dispensary on the block is a good
idea, no matter how many permits it has. As a result, the center has been
afflicted with the same kinds of small-business headaches that affect
mainstream merchants.

Some locals and shop owners complain that parking has gotten worse and
vandalism has increased since the clinic moved in last August. One morning
last week, four police cars pulled up outside the center to ask an unruly
pot patient to leave.

"I don't think anybody's against medical marijuana," said longtime
neighborhood activist Patricia Vaughey. "It's fine they are in the
neighborhood - if they behave."

The Koniuk family runs two businesses on the block, both for disabled
customers.

"There aren't too many places like this in the country, so if this place
acts like a magnet, we'll be overrun," said Walter Koniuk, who runs Custom
Orthopedic Appliances.

His son, Wayne Koniuk, who runs San Francisco Prosthetic Orthotic Service,
said that with the clinic open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day, parking is
becoming intolerable.

"It could be the biggest threat to our business so far," he said. "What's
going to happen to those amputees who have to hop a half-block down the
street, or are in a walker or a wheelchair, to try to get in the front door?"

Justmann, the center's director, said that if parking is getting worse, it
is not because of the pot patients. Most of them take public transit, and
with less than 2,000 square feet, the center is not big enough to hold many
people anyway, he said.

The big windows, bright lights, carpeted lobby and Fortune magazines make
the center look, at first glance, like an optometrist's office.

Pot for sale is carefully marked with names like OMF2, for Old Migrant
Farmworker, said to be good medicine for appetite and depression problems,
and HKSK, or Hindu Kush and Skunk, said to be good for treating nausea and
insomnia.

In the center of the room, patients play Rummy 500, eat lemon pound cake
and smoke marijuana from joints, bongs and pipes.

Even the smoke is legal. In a city where tough laws ban indoor tobacco
smoking except in homes, patients are officially allowed to smoke marijuana
inside the center.

Nursing student Luphinaa Gaspar, 27, has lupus and uses pot to treat
nausea. Paul Heaney, a Vietnam veteran who celebrated his 52nd birthday
last week at the center, said pot takes the place of addictive pain pills.

Sandi Patrick, 50, said pot helped her kick a two-year morphine habit that
developed after she fell four stories. The former Norelco saleswoman
suffered a spinal cord injury in 1985 that put her in a wheelchair and left
her in excruciating pain.

Patrick said marijuana helps her function. "I have my life back, thanks to
marijuana," she said.

With about seven other medical marijuana clinics in the city operating
without permits, why be different?

"It's been tough sledding," conceded Justmann, who is HIV-positive and uses
pot to ease pain. "The hoops we've had to jump through to make this legal,
I don't know if I'd advise the next people to do it."

However, he said, "As we walked into a new millennium, we walked into a new
mind-set about what medical cannabis should be. Someone has to bring it
above-board, because technically, we are dealing with a health issue."