POTHOLE AWAITS ATTORNEY GENERAL IN DRIVE FOR GOVERNOR

California's Lungren Can Legally Close Political Foe's Campaign
Office-Marijuana Club

LOS ANGELES—State Attorney General Dan Lungren, the front-running Republican
candidate for California governor, has a marijuana problem. Actually, two
marijuana problems.

Backed by a new court ruling barring sale of medicinal marijuana -- even
though California voters approved its use by the ill in a 1996 referendum --
Lungren has vowed to shut down nearly two dozen "cannabis clubs" still
providing patients with the pain-easing drug.

But in some liberal Northern California counties, including San Francisco,
Santa Cruz and Mendocino, local police and prosecutors are all for the
cannabis clubs, and they have shown little enthusiasm for helping Lungren
close them. In Mendocino County, local officials even debated whether to use
a vacant lot next to a police station to grow marijuana for distribution to
sick people. And in San Francisco, a lawyer in the City Attorney's Office
sued the federal Drug Enforcement Administration to prevent it from
punishing physicians who recommend marijuana for medical use.

On top of that, the founder of San Francisco's thriving Cannabis
Cultivators' Club, Dennis Peron, is Lungren's opponent in the Republican
primary election in June. He takes glee in pointing out that if the attorney
general jails him for disobeying the court order, people might think there
was a political motive lurking somewhere. Since Peron's campaign
headquarters and his psychedelically decorated, marijuana smoke-filled
emporium are one and the same, Lungren could find himself in the position of
having shut down his opponent's campaign office.

"I feel sorry for him. He just doesn't want to accept feedback from the
people. He just wants to close my campaign headquarters like some South
American dictator," said Peron, who says that for years he has been the
marijuana supplier of choice for many San Francisco homosexuals seeking
relief from the symptoms of AIDS.

Lungren shut down Peron's club for five months in 1996, before the state
referendum allowed it to reopen. He has frequently said he thinks Peron must
have been smoking too much of his own product when he entered the Republican
primary in the first place. But the attorney general, through a spokesman,
declined to comment directly on Peron's allegation about closing his
campaign office.

"He won't touch that one," said Rob Stutzman, Lungren's press secretary.

But Stutzman said: "The attorney general has a court order to enforce the
law, and Mr. Peron is breaking the law by distributing marijuana from that
address. If his campaign headquarters is there, he'd probably be well
advised to relocate his political operation."

On Feb. 25, the state Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling that,
despite the 1996 ballot initiative, cannabis clubs cannot sell or give away
marijuana to ill people because the clubs are not "primary caregivers" as
defined in the new law. The next day, a San Francisco Superior Court judge
issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting Peron from selling or giving
away marijuana, after which Lungren said he would enforce the injunction.

In deft semantic footwork, Peron immediately announced he is no longer
selling marijuana, but seeking "remuneration" for fertilizer, labor costs
and fluorescent lighting that go into producing marijuana in the basement of
his five-story cannabis club a few blocks from San Francisco City Hall. A
new sign went over the club's marijuana bar proclaiming it a "Remuneration
Station."

"We don't sell marijuana. We accept reimbursement for cultivating it, as the
law says we can do," Peron said, referring to a state Court of Appeals
ruling that a bona fide caregiver may seek reimbursement for expenses in
providing marijuana to a patient.

While no accurate statistics on medical marijuana use are available, backers
of the ballot initiative estimate that about 10,000 patients, with diseases
ranging from AIDS and cancer to glaucoma and arthritis, buy the drug to
reduce pain and control nausea.

Lungren argues that the ballot initiative, which was drafted by Peron,
allows for only three things: a doctor to recommend marijuana, a patient to
use it with a doctor's recommendation, and a primary caregiver to provide it
if the patient is unable to obtain it. The voters did not intend, and the
law still does not allow, commercial enterprises to distribute marijuana,
even in return for remuneration of costs, Lungren insists.

Matt Ross, another Lungren spokesmen, said the Feb. 25 court ruling applies
not only to Peron's club but to other clubs as well. "We will advise
district attorneys and law enforcement officials of each county of that,"
Ross said. When asked what the attorney general will do if local authorities
balk at closing the clubs, he said, "I can't get into that. But I can tell
you that we will ensure that the [court] order is enforced."

In politically conservative areas of Southern California, like Orange and
Ventura counties, local authorities wasted little time, in spite of the
ballot initiative, in shutting down cannabis clubs and even jailing their
employees. But some areas of Northern California are a different matter.

"We're all together on wanting to make [medical marijuana] work in San
Francisco. Eighty percent of the people voted for it," said District
Attorney Terence Hallinan, a self-described "Old Prog" who long has
advocated decriminalizing marijuana.

The Oakland and Santa Cruz city councils unanimously passed resolutions
defending local cannabis clubs. The resolutions condemned a lawsuit brought
last month by the U.S. Justice Department and the DEA against six San
Francisco Bay area clubs seeking to close them for violating federal laws
against cultivating, possessing and distributing marijuana. A hearing on the
case was set for March 24.

What disturbs some cannabis club operators is that Peron appears to have
backed Lungren into a corner and forced him to try to shut down clubs that
operate more discreetly than the flamboyant San Francisco Cannabis
Cultivators' Club and with the tacit approval of the local authorities.

"These clubs don't claim they are protected legally," said David Fratello,
spokesman for Americans for Medical Rights, sponsor of the 1996 ballot
initiative. "They have sought to negotiate nonenforcement arrangements with
their local law enforcement agencies because they think it's worthwhile for
them to be above ground."

Fratello said Peron's situation is different because the 1996 state
narcotics raid closed his club and he needed to reopen, even if it meant
going head-to-head with the attorney general. But he said the federal civil
lawsuit brought by the U.S. attorney for Northern California, Michael
Yamaguchi, on behalf of the DEA and Attorney General Janet Reno is more
threatening because it could lead to an end to above-ground distribution
even in local jurisdictions where the authorities resist Lungren's attempts
to close the clubs.

© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company