COURT CLEARS WAY FOR CLOSURE OF MARIJUANA CLUBS

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- 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 the clubs can't sell the drug despite a
1996 voter initiative.

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 Proposition 215 and founder of the San Francisco
enterprise now called the Cannabis Cultivators Club, insisted Wednesday
that the club was no longer selling marijuana but was merely being
reimbursed for cultivation costs, and was 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 would ask a San Francisco judge on
Thursday to order Peron's club closed, and expected 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 have also 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 Proposition 215.

Proposition 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 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 Proposition 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 letters 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 here,'' Peron added.

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.

The case is People vs. Peron, S067387.