JUDGE TELLS POT CLUB TO CURB ILLEGAL SALES

Hearing set: Lungren's bid to close the operation is rejected but will be
considered again June 4.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A judge refused Wednesday to order the immediate
shutdown of a medicinal marijuana club that opened a day after the Cannabis
Cultivators Club, on the same site, was closed by court order.

Superior Court Judge William Cahill instead told operators of the new
Cannabis Healing Center to curb drug sales and other illegal activities
within 150 feet of its premises and to appear at a hearing June 4, along
with Attorney General Dan Lungren's office, to see whether drug laws are
being broken at the club.

The Cannabis Cultivators Club supplied marijuana to about 9,000 patients. It
was run by Dennis Peron, author of Proposition 215, the November 1996
initiative that allowed patients to use marijuana for medicinal purposes,
easing the side effects of cancer therapy, AIDS and other illnesses, with a
doctor's recommendation.

A state appeals court ruled last year that the club, a commercial entity
that served patients coming off the street, was not a ``primary caregiver''
authorized by Proposition 215 to provide marijuana. Lungren went to court
for a shutdown order, but Peron contended he was complying with the ruling
and serving only patients for whom the club provided continuing care.

Superior Court Judge David Garcia sidestepped the dispute and instead
ordered the club closed based on Peron's admission that it sold marijuana
not only to patients but also to caregivers of bedridden patients.

The club closed April 20. The next day, the Cannabis Healing Center opened
in the same storefront, under the direction of 79-year-old Hazel Rodgers,
who uses marijuana for glaucoma.

The center says it is acting as primary caregiver for 300 to 500 patients a day.

Lungren's office went back to court, saying the center was the old club with
a new name and in any event could not qualify as a primary caregiver. The
attorney general also offered a sworn statement from the manager of a nearby
cocktail lounge that people were smoking marijuana outside the club and also
selling the drug to others.

But Cahill, who heard the case Tuesday after each side challenged a judge,
said in Wednesday's order that he lacked evidence of activities inside the
club that would justify closing it.

At the June hearing, ``we'll give him more evidence that this is a drug
house,'' Lungren spokesman Rob Stutzman said.