SAN FRANCISCO DEPUTIES SHUT DOWN CITY'S LARGEST MARIJUANA CLUB

Law Enforcement: Seven people are evicted and the locks are changed in the
second raid of the 9,000-member medicinal club.

San Francisco- More than two dozen sheriff's deputies swooped down on San
Francisco's largest medical marijuana club in a pre-dawn raid Monday to
shut it down in keeping with a judge's order.

Four days after Superior Court Judge William Cahill declared the club a
public nuisance, a busload of deputies in through a back door of the
Cannabis Healing Center at 6 a.m. They evicted seven people staying there,
changed the locks and spent most of the day taking an inventory of the
building's contents.

The raid was the second time the 9,000-member club has been shut down. This
time, deputies will remain around the clock to ensure that it does not
reopen, Sheriff Mike Hennessey said.

About three handfuls of dried marijuana and three dozen 4-inch plants were
found, Hennessey said. Nobody was arrested.

The raid was the latest skirmish over Proposition 215, the voter-approved
measure legalizing marijuana for medical use in California. U.S. District
Judge Charles Breyer last week banned distribution of the drug, saying the
initiative cannot override a federal ban.

In doing so, Breyer rejected arguments that the clubs should be entitled to
furnish the drug because customers find it hard to survive without
marijuana to ease the pain and side effects of cancer and AIDS therapy.

Several other medical marijuana clubs have refused to abide by his order.

The court-imposed deadline to shut the club down was Wednesday. Co-founder
Dennis Peron said the club had voluntarily shut down Saturday. It stopped
distributing marijuana and was operating strictly as the headquarters for
his gubernatorial campaign, Peron said.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski