JUDGE ORDERS MEDICAL MARIJUANA CLUBS TO CLOSE

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Two of six Northern California medical marijuana
clubs have vowed to defy a federal judge's order to close their doors for
violating federal laws against distributing drugs.

Despite U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer's order, made public Wednesday,
the Cannabis Healing Center in San Francisco and the Oakland Cannabis
Buyers' Club both refused to shut down.

In his preliminary order, issued May 13, Breyer said that Proposition 215,
the November 1996 initiative that legalized medical marijuana under
California law, did not and could not override the federal ban on the drug.

"A state law which purports to legalize the distribution of marijuana for
any purpose ... even a laudable one ... directly conflicts with federal
law," Breyer wrote.

He rejected arguments that the clubs should be entitled to furnish the drug
because their customers cannot survive without marijuana to ease the pain
and side effects of their cancer and AIDS therapy.

"We're not going to close, even if we have to go to jail," said Hazel
Rodgers, the 79-year-old glaucoma sufferer who became the San Francisco
club's director last month when its predecessor, the Cannabis Cultivators
Club, was closed by state court order.

"So many thousands of people depend on us," she added.

The Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Club, with 1,700 patients, also planned to
take the issue to trial and planned to openly dispense medical marijuana to
patients beginning this morning.

"We are going to remain open until they physically come in and shut us
down," Executive Director Jeff Jones said. "We feel that this is a
necessity to the patients that we serve, and until a jury of our peers in
California says that we should shut down, we're going to stay open."

The ruling covers only the six clubs that the Justice Department targeted:
two in San Francisco and one each in Oakland, southern Marin County, Santa
Cruz and Ukiah. But Breyer's reasoning could apply to any of the more than
30 medical marijuana clubs in California, most of which sprang up after
Proposition 215 passed.

Copyright © The Associated Press Copyright © The Sacramento Bee