THE QUIET CRUSADER

Jeff Jones has good reason for taking the heat in the medicinal marijuana
battle

As the cancer stole his father away bit by bit, 14-year-old Jeff Jones
would sit by his bedside in their South Dakota home and talk about fishing
and camping and other ordinary things a boy might discuss with his father,
as though time wasn't running out.

Those are days that Jones, now 24, does not like to remember. But he forces
himself to when he needs a reminder of why he has given up everything --
old friends, a college education, the regular worries of a young adult --
to become one of Northern California's leading crusaders for the rights of
the ill and dying to use medicinal marijuana.

Soft-spoken and shy, Jones, the co-founder and executive director of
Oakland's Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, seems an unlikely person to be at
the center of one of the biggest political battles in California.

But in the almost two years since California's passage of Proposition 215,
the law that legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes, Jones' cooperative
has been labeled a model program and Oakland has willingly put itself at
legal risk for the club by declaring it a city agency in an attempt to
shield it from federal attempts to shut it down.

``Jeff has always made an attempt to be professional and has done
everything he could to cooperate with the community, law enforcement, the
medical community,'' says Dale Gieringer, coordinator of the California
branch for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

The fate of Jones' club -- as well as clubs in Ukiah and the Marin County
town of Fairfax -- is in the hands of U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer.
On Monday, the judge rejected government arguments that the clubs should be
shut down immediately for violating federal drug laws.

A hearing on whether the case should go to a jury trial is scheduled for
September 28. The clubs are allowed to remain open until then.

But Breyer rejected the Oakland club's novel legal argument that it should
be immune from prosecution because its staff had been designated as
``officers of the city'' by Oakland last month -- a status, attorneys for
the club argued, that gave it protection under a provision of the Federal
Controlled Substances Act.

Oakland officials say that despite Breyer's ruling, the club will remain a
city-sanctioned agency.

``If the cannabis club wasn't being operated as it is by Jeff, I would have
some concerns,'' says Councilman Nate Miley. ``But I'm pleased to stand by
this young man and put the full weight and authority I have behind him.''
As a show of support, the City Council also told police to make medical
marijuana arrests a low priority and passed a policy that gives users of
medical marijuana permission to store up to 1 1/2 pounds of it -- 24 times
more than is allowed under state law.

Not everyone is happy about the leniency afforded the Oakland club. City
Manager Robert Bobb, Police Chief Joseph Samuels and Councilman Ignacio De
La Fuente have said they consider the 1 1/2- pound policy too permissive.
Officials of the U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on Jones or
the club.

But 2,000 club members with AIDS, cancer, glaucoma and other ailments are
delighted by what Jones has been able to pull off.

``He is putting his freedom on the line for us, the patients,'' says club
member Ken Estes, a gaunt, ponytailed man who has been wheelchair-bound
since a motorcycle accident 22 years ago. ``I have the utmost respect for
him for that.''

Such sentiments weigh heavily on the lanky, boyish-faced Jones, who
resembles those wholesome-looking missionaries who stand on street corners
and politely but determinedly ask whether you've come to know the Lord yet.
Jones is not a natural-born crusader. He speaks quietly and blushes easily.
In high school, he was kicked off the debate team because he mumbled.

``Sometimes, I think, `You're only 24,' and it freaks me out,'' Jones says.
``I think, `What the hell am I doing?' '' For Jones, the daily worry isn't
simply that the club's doors will someday be padlocked. As a named
co-defendant in the federal suit against the club, Jones himself faces
civil conspiracy charges. He worries that they may be upgraded to criminal
and that he will end up in jail.

In his hometown of Rapid City, S.D., word of what he is doing in Oakland
has spread. Old friends have severed ties, saying they don't agree with his
mission or that they are afraid of the federal attention he is attracting.
After a story about Jones appeared in the local newspaper last year, the
Rapid City mayor and sheriff threw an anti-marijuana rally.

Marijuana was never discussed when Jones' father, Wayne, was dying of
cancer. First it invaded his kidneys and then his lungs; he slipped from a
hearty 200-pound man to a 100-pound silhouette of his former self in a
matter of a year.

Years after his father's death, when the growing national debate about
marijuana for medicinal purposes caught his attention, Jones began to
wonder whether marijuana would have helped ease his father's torment. He
now grows angry at the thought that it was never an option.

Jones came to the Bay Area in 1994 on a one-way bus ticket from South
Dakota. He left college to join lobbying efforts to legalize marijuana.

After passage of Proposition 215 in November 1996, Jones and a handful of
others opened the cannabis club in a third-floor office of a nondescript
building on Broadway. Ten staff members and a handful of volunteers run the
operation, which sees as many as 100 customers a day.

The Oakland cooperative is a different scene from the one captured by
television news crews at Dennis Peron's former San Francisco club

- --a ``social Amsterdam-like speakeasy'' image that ``tainted'' all other
clubs, lobbyist Gieringer says.

In contrast, the Oakland club is a no-smoking zone. A sign on the wall
beyond the front door announces that cash, ATM cards and credit cards are
accepted. Support groups and massages are offered.

Marijuana is sold from a back room that can be entered only by showing a
police-approved club identification card to a private security guard. That
card can be obtained only by providing a doctor's letter that is verified
by an on-staff nurse, Jones says.

Here, often-isolated people get a chance to meet new friends; to talk and
laugh and forget for a while about the pain and loneliness that come with
their illnesses.

But it is a somber place, too. Jones has gone, he says, from ``one person
in my immediate family dying to people dying all around me all the time.''

He admits that part of him wants to finish college, to travel the world, to
just be 24 and nothing else. Not a week goes by that he doesn't question
what he is doing.

Then he thinks of his father. And he is grounded.

``I knew in my father's eyes what he was feeling when he was dying,'' he says.

``I know what I'm doing now is right.''

1998 San Francisco Chronicle Page A19

Checked-by: Pat Dolan