WHERE POT ACTIVISM GROWS

Peron Retreats To Lower Lake

LOWER LAKE - In the kitchen of a ranch-style house on the sloping
terrain that is southern Lake County, Dennis Peron tells about his
great last crusade.

This one, he says, is about democracy, about people getting what they
want -- marijuana to ease their ailments.

With disheveled white hair, wire-rim glasses and a face that wrinkles
at the slightest expression, the trim 52-year-old Bronx native looks
more like a tortured college professor than a crusader for medical
marijuana.

For decades, Peron has been a fixture of San Francisco as a gay
activist and marijuana proponent, but now he has retreated to rural
Lake County to grow the controversial plant and provide it to
patients. Except for two raids last year, authorities have left Peron
and his friends to their own devices in this remote location south of
Lower Lake.

The author of California's medical marijuana initiative, which voters
approved in 1996, relishes the thought the battle may be nearly over.
One positive sign, he said, is a medical study released last week that
declared that marijuana effectively counteracts pain, nausea and
weight loss.

"I have one word for it: vindication," Peron said. "Even the study
said certain patients have to use marijuana. The handwriting is on the
wall: Medical necessity is greater than federal law."

Peron is also encouraged by last fall's election of a new state
attorney general. Bill Lockyer, a Democrat who said he voted for
Proposition 215, which legalized marijuana use for medical reasons,
has appointed a task force to explore the initiative and how to clarify it.

In the meantime, Lockyer's official position is to let local agencies
decide how to administer the law, a spokesman said. That hands-off
approach is a major departure from Lockyer's predecessor, Dan Lungren,
who joined with federal authorities to aggressively challenge Peron
and the pot clubs that sprouted in the aftermath of the proposition's
approval.

After a Superior Court judge shut down his San Francisco Cannabis
Buyers Club last year, Peron and his associates shifted their
attention to cultivating marijuana on the 20-acre farm lent to him by
a friend stricken with cancer. Instead of providing the dried final
product to patients, as the Cannabis Buyers Club did, Peron and the
cooperative that runs the farm grow plants from seedlings and then
give the plants to patients to harvest themselves.

Proposition 215 "has limits," said John Entwistle, who supervises the
farm's planting and growing. "We wanted to show what it can do. You
have real power in growing marijuana."

That is a view shared in part by Dean Pick, the Lake County sheriff's
detective in charge of marijuana enforcement. He said he believes the
proposition allows sick people to cultivate their own marijuana, but
growing for others -- even giving away pot plants to patients who say
they need it -- violates the law, he said.

Regardless of the terms of Proposition 215, federal law supersedes
state law, according to Evelyn James, a spokeswoman for the federal
Drug Enforcement Agency's San Francisco office. She questioned why
Peron doesn't focus his efforts on pursuing alternatives, like a
federally approved pill containing synthetic THC, an active ingredient
in marijuana.

"I wonder if his motivation is compassion or if it is publicity,"
James said.

DEA agents, with Lake County sheriff's deputies, raided the farm in
May and August 1998, confiscating all marijuana on the premises.

But Peron and Entwistle praised Lake County Sheriff Rodney Mitchell
and the agents who carried out the raids, calling them professional
and gentlemanly. No one was handcuffed or led away.

"All the patients here had AIDS. One was in a wheelchair. It was a
pretty pathetic group," Peron said. "Within an hour of the cops
leaving, we were replanting."

Undeterred, Entwistle and Peron plan to hold another public
celebration this May when they move farm operations from two
greenhouses they use in the winter to outside garden beds. And the
pair also plans to open a store in San Francisco's Castro District in
July to sell marijuana plants to urban-dwelling patients.

As it is, the farm supplies 200 people. People like Terri Sunshine of
Clearlake inspire Peron and Entwistle to continue increasing
production, they said.

Sunshine stopped by this week to pick up a plant. The farm charges
customers $25 for 2-foot-high plants that produce roughly 2 ounces of
harvestable pot, something that goes for $1,000 on the street.

The farm charges for the labor, water and electricity used to grow the
plant, but the marijuana itself is free, Entwistle said. Entwistle
instructed Sunshine to put the plant under light 12 hours a day and
water it daily for two weeks before harvesting the buds.

Sunshine, 42, said she suffers from intense pain related to
hemorrhoids that required surgery and left her bedridden for three
years. She has had three surgeries and may need another this year.
Without marijuana, she cannot sleep or do basic housework, she said.

Buying marijuana on the street is often expensive and dangerous, she
said. Sunshine was robbed a few days ago when she approached someone
to buy a joint.

"With the (cannabis) clubs shut down, you can't go anywhere to get
it," Sunshine said. "I love their goal to make it cost-free, or as
near cost-free as possible, because a lot of us are on SSI (government
assistance) and can't afford it."

Peron maintains a sort of halfway house at the farm. People suffering
from AIDS or other ailments can stay in one of the home's five
bedrooms for up to two weeks. They gather on couches or stools,
usually around a table with a Mason jar full of marijuana, and smoke
and converse. Outside is a deck and small pond.

Country life, Peron readily admitted, is a major change for him. His
new home sits at the end of a dirt and gravel driveway, miles from a
paved road and surrounded by rolling landscape spotted by rocks and
trees.

"This is (Proposition) 215," Peron said while looking over the
property. "Here it is: a cooperative garden, a bunch of people growing
together, with the only motivation to get medicine."