SHERIFF EVICTS SAN FRANCISCO'S CANNABIS HEALING CENTER, CHANGES LOCKS

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- 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 local judge's order.

Four days after San Francisco Superior Court Judge William Cahill declared
the club a public nuisance, a locksmith let 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.

Only a small amount of the drug -- about three handfuls of dried marijuana
and three dozen 4-inch plants were found, Sheriff Mike Hennessey said.
Nobody was arrested.

The raid was the latest skirmish over Proposition 215, the voter-approved
measure legalizing marijuana for medical use in the state of California.
U.S. District Court 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.
Clubs in Oakland, Ukiah and the Marin County town of Fairfax continued to
operate.

Saturday's raid was the second time San Francisco's club, the largest in
the state with 9,000 members, has been shut down. This time, deputies will
remain on premises to ensure that it does not reopen, Hennessey said.

The enforcement action came the day before the court-imposed deadline to
shut it down and two days after the club ceased operations voluntarily,
cofounder Dennis Peron said. He said that as of Saturday, it had stopped
distributing marijuana and was operating strictly as the headquarters for
his gubernatorial campaign.

``We could fight, but it seems like everything is against us,'' he said
outside the building on Saturday, where he was surrounded by about 50
patients and supporters chanting, waving signs, smoking pot, playing guitar
and singing.

Among the protesters was Robert Brust, Jr., who smokes marijuana to ease
the chronic pain he has suffered since being thrown out a third-story
window in 1989 by burglars invading his apartment in Los Angeles. He
refuses to take any man-made medicines to ease the discomfort, not even
aspirin, he said.

``It's a sad day,'' Brust said. ``This is a mistake. These people will have
to go legally out in public to get their marijuana now. That'll cause a lot
of problems for police, more than they thought they had here.''

Hennessey, who has publicly supported Proposition 215, said he had mixed
emotions about shutting the club down.

``You have to be flexible and follow the law,'' he said.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski