S.F. SHERIFF SEALS DOORS OF POT CLUB

Fast reopening for Peron seems unlikely this time

The doors to California's foremost center for medical marijuana were
chained closed yesterday after San Francisco sheriff's deputies moved in
and took over the club's five-story building on Market Street.

A ``Closed'' sign was taped on the inside of the smoky glass doors at the
building's entrance. Posted underneath it, on the outside, was a second
sign: ``For Now.''

``This is wrong and you know it's wrong and everyone knows it's wrong!''
hollered Dennis Peron, the club founder and gubernatorial candidate, to 250
club members who were milling around on the sidewalk outside the locked doors.

``We will appeal. We will reinvent ourselves. This is a temporary setback.
We will come back like the phoenix.''

Club members, some in wheelchairs, held candles aloft and shouted support
to Peron as he stood on a trash can to address them outside the building,
on Market Street near Van Ness Avenue. If any were shocked when Peron
coughed after taking a symbolic puff on a marijuana cigarette, they were
too polite to say so.

A Superior Court order last week gave the Sheriff's Department until today
to shut down the Cannabis Healing Center -- a reincarnation of Peron's
Cannabis Cultivators Club, which occupied the same site until a different
court order forced it out of business last month.

The ruling and yesterday's closure were victories for state Attorney
General Dan Lungren and his office, which has been trying to shut down the
San Francisco pot club since even before the 1996 passage of Proposition
215, which made it legal with a doctor's recommendation to possess and
cultivate marijuana for medical purposes. There are now more than 30 such
clubs in the state.

``These folks tried their best to find a way that Proposition 215 could
work, but the courts have ruled that Prop. 215 only allows an individual to
grow marijuana and use it for himself or herself,'' said Sheriff Michael
Hennessey, who led yesterday's early morning foray. ``Any distribution or
sales is illegal. For that reason, they were closed down.''

PHILOSOPHICAL ACCEPTANCE

In mid-April, Hennessey served Peron with papers ordering him to close the
Cannabis Cultivators Club. But the next day, the marijuana emporium was up
and running again with a new name, new director and modified rules.

This time, Hennessey said, he has been ordered to keep the building secure
until the landlord posts private security guards.

``I think this location is gone for good now,'' Hennessey said. ``When a
group or someone such as Dennis Peron or Hazel Rodgers (the 79-year-old who
officially ran the Healing Center) are trying to overcome the determined
effort of the state attorney general and the federal government, you know
who's going to lose.''

Earlier yesterday, about 30 or so of the club's members gathered on the
sidewalk in front of building, sometimes speaking angrily but more often
simply being sadly philosophical.

``They're playing political football. Lungren's running for governor,''
said Tom Flower, an Anglican priest who ministers to street people and runs
the soup kitchen Loaves and Fishes.

RESPECT ON BOTH SIDES

Lynn Smith, one of seven club residents evicted from the premises by
yesterday's action, was in the shower when the deputies arrived about 6:15
a.m. After they pounded on the door, she threw it open, thinking it was a
fellow tenant.

``I got shampoo on my head and no clothes on. `You get some clothes on!'
they said. I said, `When I finish my shower.' ''

Once she dressed, Smith said, the deputies gave her time to tag her
bicycle, which was in the basement. They also allowed her to take her
``medicine'' when she left, although they wouldn't let her take her pipe.

Smith said she did not know where she would spend the night, and she
worried about the computers left behind, their disks loaded with club
members' medical information.

But all in all, she said, the deputies were ``nice, given the circumstances.''

Hennessey, on the other side of the operation, returned the compliment:
``The people in the building were always, this time and last time, very
cooperative and respectful of the job the Sheriff's Department had to do. I
think that is an indication of their desire to enact the law, not to flaunt
the law.''

MODEST AMOUNT OF MARIJUANA

Eileen Hirst, Hennessey's chief of staff, said that once the building was
vacated, deputies inventoried its contents, including desks, couches, pens
and pencils, ``Peron for Governor'' buttons and signs, and several cases of
``Brownie Mary's Cookbook.''

``There wasn't very much marijuana -- maybe two big handfuls,'' Hirst said.
She said it took 30 to 35 people until noon to finish the inventory.

Hirst also said a locksmith changed the locks on the building. Five
deputies remained posted inside.

The medical records of club members were not seized when the club was
closed. Peron, wearing a lei of marijuana leaves around his neck last
night, said the club knew in advance that the closure was coming and was
storing the records elsewhere.

With the center's closure, club members worried about where they would get
marijuana. Another pot club in San Francisco remains open, and there are
clubs in Oakland and Marin County as well -- but they are operating in
defiance of a federal court order.

``Now I have to go up to Dolores Park and risk getting arrested (during a
street buy) to get my medicine,'' said one member who did not give his name.

In addition to the dope, however, the San Francisco club provided its 8,000
members with a camaraderie that cannot be easily replaced. While at least
one member thought it was the accompanying social scene that riled Lungren,
others seemed to feel that element was as healing as the marijuana.

``Most of the people I knew and used to socialize with are gone,'' said
Bart Bartholomew, a member who also volunteered at the club. ``This was one
place I could come and feel welcome.''

1998 San Francisco Chronicle Page A1

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski