CALLING ITSELF A HEALING CENTER, DEFIANT MARIJUANA CLUB REOPENS

SAN FRANCISCO -- After a brief court-ordered closing, this city's most
famous medical marijuana club reopened Tuesday under a new name and
director, once again thwarting efforts by the California attorney general
to shut it down.

The closing resulted from a ruling in San Francisco County Superior Court
on April 15 that the Cannabis Cultivators Club, which opened in 1992 and
has a membership of 8,000, was "clearly engaging in the illegal sale of
marijuana." The court also ordered the club's founder, Dennis R. Peron, to
quit selling marijuana.

The ruling came out of a civil case brought by Attorney General Dan Lungren
after a 1996 raid on the club by state drug agents. Sheriff's deputies
closed the club on Monday.

But in a plan hatched last week and widely reported in newspapers here,
Peron stepped down as director and turned over the lease to a member, a
79-year-old woman who proceeded to reopen the club Tuesday as the Cannabis
Healing Center.

"You can say it's all semantic mumbo jumbo," said Peron, who also said the
club was operating lawfully under the 1996 state law legalizing marijuana
for medical use, which he helped write. "But they wanted to shut down the
club on a technicality, and so we're going to go with the letter of the
law." Peron promised to have nothing further to do with club management and
devote all his time to his long-shot campaign against Lungren for the
Republican nomination for governor.

But Peron also faces criminal drug charges brought by Lungren across the
San Francisco Bay, in Alameda County. And he is a co-defendant in a federal
civil case brought by the United States Justice Department seeking to close
down six Northern California marijuana clubs.

Rob Stutzman, a spokesman for Lungren, said the attorney general was
considering action against the new center.

Legal questions remain for the future of the medical marijuana outlet. In
1996, about 56 percent of California voters approved a state initiative,
Proposition 215, legalizing the possession of marijuana for the seriously
ill and their caregivers.