DECISION BARRING POT CLUB STANDS

State Supreme Court refuses the case.Authorities are expected to move to
close all of them.

San Francisco - The state Supreme Court cleared the way Wednesday for
possible closure of all medical marijuana clubs in California, leaving
intact a lower-court ruling that a 1996 voter initiative does not allow the
clubs to sell the drug.

The court unanimously denied review of an appellate decision, issued last
December, that said Proposition 215 did not allow anyone to sell marijuana
and did not allow a commercial enterprise to furnish marijuana as a
"primary caregiver."

The appellate ruling is now binding on trial courts statewide.

Dennis Peron, author of Prop. 215 and founder of the San Francisco
enterprise now called the Cannabis Cultivators Club, insisted Wednesday
that the club is no longer selling marijuana but is merely being reimbursed
for cultivation costs and that it is in compliance with the ruling.

But if courts disagree and order a shutdown, "we're going to stay here
until the tanks come," he said.

The state's lawyer in the case said he will ask today that a San Francisco
judge order Peron's club closed, and he expects the closure of all such
operations in California as a result of the ruling.

"Voters did not intend to allow commercial enterprises to sell narcotics,
like Mr. Peron's doing," said John Gordnier, a senior assistant attorney
general.

Federal prosecutors also have asked a federal judge to shut down Peron's
club and five others, saying they are violating federal law against the
possession and sale of marijuana, regardless of Prop. 215.

Two members of the Orange County Cannabis Co-Op are awaiting trial on
charges of selling marijuana. Marvin Chavez, the cannabis club's director,
and volunteer David Herrick contend that they merely gave marijuana to
patients who made voluntary "donations."

The court's ruling came as no surprise to Orange County Deputy District
Attorney Car Armbrust, who is prosecuting the two men.

"It was pretty open and shut: (The clubs) were selling marijuana and
they're not allowed to do that," Armbrust said. "That's bad news for Marvin
Chavez and also for Mr. Herrick."

Jon Alexander, Chavez's attorney, said the court decision is irrelevant.

"That doesn't affect his case whatsoever," Alexander said. "None of the
people who received marijuana from Marvin Chavez were at any time expected
to pay. There was no sale."

Prop. 215, passed in November 1996, allows possession and cultivation of
marijuana upon a doctor's recommendation to ease the pain and nausea of
AIDS, cancer, glaucoma and other conditions.

Peron's club, then called the Cannabis Buyers' Club, had been raided three
months earlier by Attorney General Dan Lungren's agents, who said marijuana
was being sold to people without doctors' prescriptions. They got a judge
to shut it down, but it was reopened in January 1997 by Superior Court
Judge David Garcia, who said Prop. 215 allowed a nonprofit organization to
sell marijuana to patients who had named the club as their "primary
caregiver."

But the 1st District Court of Appeal overruled Garcia last December and
said state law prohibits anyone, including a nonprofit organization, from
selling marijuana or possessing it for sale.

"The intent of the initiative was to allow persons to cultivate and possess
a sufficient amount of marijuana for their own approved medical purposes,
and to allow 'primary caregivers' the same authority to act on behalf of
those patients too ill or bedridden to do so," said the opinion by
Presiding Justice J. Clinton Peterson.

He said the only way a patient can obtain marijuana legally is to grow it
or obtain it from a primary caregiver who has grown it.

A primary caregiver - defined by the initiative as an individual,
designated by the patient, "who has consistently assumed responsibility
for the housing, health, or safety of that person"cannot be a commercial
enterprise like the Cannabis Buyers' Club, Peterson said.

The vote was 3-0 to reinstate the closure order. But one appellate justice,
J. Anthony Kline, said the ruling was written too broadly and might make it
impossible for many seriously ill patients to obtain marijuana.

Peron said Wednesday the club had changed its operations because of a
statement in Peterson's ruling that a caregiver, while barred from selling
marijuana, could be reimbursed for the cost of cultivation.

"We're being reimbursed for the marijuana we cultivate legally as
caregivers for these people who have letter from their doctors," he said.

"It may be against the law to sell marijuana but it's morally wrong to let
someone die, and we are saving lives her," Peron said.

Gordnier, the state's lawyer, said the club is ineligible to be a primary
caregiver and therefore cannot operate legally under the court's ruling.