CANNABIS CLUB TO BE REBORN

It will reopen as "healing center'; Peron to step aside

Cannabis Cultivators Club founder Dennis Peron says he's stepping aside as
its director and expects Sheriff Mike Hennessey to shut it down, briefly,
on Monday, after which it will be reborn and reopened as the Cannabis
Healing Center.

Marijuana was still being sold and smoked Thursday by hundreds of members
inside the 1444 Market St. club, the day after a Superior Court judge
ordered it closed.

In the immediate aftermath of Judge David Garcia's ruling that the club was
"engaging in illegal sales of marijuana" and ordering its closure, Peron
was defiant and announced that he'd appeal.

But by Thursday afternoon he'd changed his mind.

"We're not going to appeal the decision," said Peron, adding, tongue in
cheek, "I see the error of my ways."

Instead, Peron has asked Hennessey to close the club Monday and confiscate
any "contraband" he finds therein, a move aimed at averting a raid by
agents of the state's Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement (BNE).

Judge Garcia's order directed Hennessey to close the building down "at his
discretion." If Hennessey declines, the judge said, the BNE could do the
job.

"My department is looking on this as an eviction, and we do thousands of
those every year," Hennessey said. His eviction team will make its move
"probably on Monday," he said.

Peron's plan is to turn over directorship of the Market Street operation to
78-year-old Hazel Rogers, a longtime Cannabis Cultivators Club member. That
club will cease to exist, and the Cannabis Healing Center will take its
place, on the same premises, probably on Tuesday, Peron said.

Whether the change of directors and titles satisfies the court's order is
anybody's guess, and the answer may have to come from a court.

In ruling against Peron, Judge Garcia noted that the defendant admitted
that he had sold marijuana to people who were acting as primary caregivers
for bedridden or hospital-bound patients. Such sales are not authorized
under Proposition 215 -- the medical marijuana initiative approved by
California voters in November, 1996, the judge said. On Thursday, Peron
said that the club will no longer distribute marijuana to anyone who is not
a patient. The exceptions are patients who are physically unable to come in
to purchase their marijuana; in that case, he said, club volunteers will
take it to them.

)1998 San Francisco Examiner