CANNABIS CLUB FOUNDER GETS SIX-YEAR SENTENCE

WESTMINSTER, Calif. (AP) -- The founder of an Orange County medical
cannabis club was sentenced today to six years in state prison for selling
marijuana to undercover officers and mailing pot to a cancer patient.

Marvin Chavez, who says he uses marijuana to ease the pain of an old back
injury, was immediately remanded into custody by Superior Court Judge
Thomas J. Borris. He winced as a bailiff cuffed his hands behind a back
brace protruding under his sport coat.

His attorney said he would appeal.

"His motivation is to help others in pain," said defense attorney J. David
Nick.

A jury convicted Chavez in November of two felony counts of selling
marijuana and a felony charge that he mailed 5 ounces to a patient in
Chino. Other charges that he gave the drug to caregivers for patients were
reduced to misdemeanors, and the judge gave him suspended sentences.

However, the six-year term includes two years for flouting the law by
mailing the marijuana while Chavez, 42, was free on his own recognizance.

Prosecutor Carl Armbrust maintained that Chavez, founder of the Orange
County Cannabis Co-op, was nothing more than a sophisticated street pusher,
using Proposition 215, the state's new medical marijuana law, as a front.

The measure, passed in 1996, legalized the possession, cultivation and use
of cannabis for medical purposes, but not its sale. Armbrust acknowledged
that Chavez gave away marijuana, but said he did it only as a come-on for
customers.

"This is good business, no doubt about it," he said. Chavez sold the leaf
for about $55 an ounce, according to Armbrust.

An ounce of high-quality marijuana sells for about $600 in the Los Angeles
area. Westminster is about 30 miles south of the city's downtown.

Chavez said he was trying to create a "white market" for marijuana because
it was so expensive to buy clandestinely.

"I'm here to obey the law as a citizen. I don't endorse no illegal activity
or drug abuse," Chavez said. His attorney said he gave marijuana to cancer
sufferers, AIDS patients and others in need, accepting only donations in
return.

Borris threatened to clear a courtroom filled with at least 20 Chavez
supporters when their grumbles rose at Armbrust's allegations.

"Marijuana is still an illicit drug in the United States, and California is
part of the United States," he told the judge.

"He's from another era," Dion Markgraaff, a San Diego marijuana activist,
said afterward of the prosecutor. "He's from the industrial death era.
We're going into the era that projects life."

Armbrust declined to give his age. He retired shortly after trying the case
and returned to work only for sentencing.

Chavez turned down a deal to plead guilty in return for a sentence of days
rather than years.

"If he was really getting all that money from drug dealing, he would be in
a mansion right now," said his wife, Linda Chavez.

"He doesn't even own a car," she said.