LOCKYER STANCE ON POT PRAISED

Marijuana Providers Look To Expand Patients' Access

Marijuana providers who quietly continued to dispense medical pot
following last year's crackdown, on Saturday applauded Attorney
General Bill Lockyer's announcement that he would not interfere with
their practice as long as they operated discreetly.

"If local law enforcement is supportive of implementation of
Proposition 215, and their policies don't provoke outside prosecution,
I have no intention of intervening," Lockyer, a Democrat who supported
the 1996 ballot initiative to legalize pot for medical use, said
Friday in San Francisco following a meeting with City officials.

When U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ordered San Francisco's
high-profile Cannabis Cultivators Club shut down last year, it raised
concerns among those in need of medical marijuana that they would have
to wait out court appeals before they could resume receiving pot.

In reality, most were not long without a joint.

Jane Weirick was one of those who leaped into the void to help those
she felt were in need.

"We were seeing people who couldn't wait until this was sorted out in
court," said Weirick, 39, who had worked with the Cannabis Cultivators
Club in The City. "We were seeing people get very sick, even dying, as
they waited for their medicine."

Weirick helped found Compassion On Wheels, and began distributing
marijuana door-to-door to 250 of the neediest patients.

"These were the ones that were the sickest, who were the least able to
get out of their homes to score pot for themselves," she said. "There
was no way they were going to be able to head to Dolores Park without
becoming the victims of a crime."

Weirick also found that her clientele needed more than just
marijuana.

"This isn't just about smoking pot. One of the things the club
provided was a place where people suffering through similar pain could
meet and discuss their illnesses, or just socialize," she said. "Now
when we deliver the marijuana, most of the people ask us to stay, have
some tea, some conversation, some human contact. That is such an
important element of what we do."

Rich Evans also barely blinked following the crackdown. With zero
publicity, he began providing marijuana to 1,000 patients out of a
Mission Street storefront.

"We didn't have a Web page or anything like that," said Evans, 35.
"This is all strictly word of mouth. That's part of trying to keep
things low key, as well as using a smaller building than the old club.
But also there's no real need to jump into the media spotlight."

One of the main differences between Evans' distribution center and the
former Cannabis Cultivators Club is that there is little, if any,
smoking on the premises. And while Weirick stressed the social aspects
of a marijuana club, Evans was of two minds.

"I think that medical marijuana should be fun, that's true," he said.
"But I also think that people should become more independent. At the
old place, people would just hang around and smoke, and once it closed
it was as if they were lost, without a place to go. People should be
capable of meeting their own social needs.

"And frankly," Evans added with a laugh, "the old atmosphere was
getting kind of seedy. I think I'm turning into a Republican or something."

As for the future, Weirick has been working with others toward opening
the Patients Resource Center, which would not only provide marijuana
to those who need it but serve as more of a clinic.

"We're trying to get away from that whole "club' identification,"
admitted Weirick. "The television cameras would come in and focus on
the one guy in tie-dye who looked like he was there for a hangnail and
just having a blast. The resource center would help patients with
other needs and also work closely with doctors and other researchers
who wanted to study the effects of marijuana on any number of medical
conditions."

District Attorney Terence Hallinan said he liked the idea of the
resource center, yet didn't offer much hope of The City contributing
much funding.

"Anything that stresses the medical and research elements of marijuana
distribution is on the right track," Hallinan said. "But on the other
hand, San Francisco has to be very careful about not putting anything
right in the face of the federal government, and contributing city
funds to something like this at this time would probably provoke them.

"I think that right now people do have access to medical marijuana in
San Francisco, but it is all being done underground, and not helping
as many people as it ideally should. But I prefer to take the
long-range view of things, and unfortunately, they have to keep their
heads down right now."

Dennis Peron, co-author of Prop. 215 and founder of the Cannabis
Cultivators Club, was supportive of Lockyer's statements, as far as
they went.

"I support the guy," Peron said of Lockyer, "and I hope to work with
him. But what good is it if we don't have uniformity throughout the
state? Does this mean you're lucky if you get cancer in San Francisco
but you're unlucky if you're sick in Orange County?"

The U.S. attorney's office declined to comment on Lockyer's statement
that quiet pot distribution probably would not spark federal
prosecution. The Associated Press contributed to this report.