CANNABIS CLUBS FACE SHUTDOWNS

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. -- Three days a week, behind an unmarked office door
above an auto-parts store, the Los Angeles Cannabis Buyers' Club discreetly
goes about distributing medical marijuana to people with serious illnesses
and pain.

The nonprofit collective has 764 members, most of whom have HIV or AIDS.
All have major health problems -- as recorded in writing by their doctors.
Staff members carefully check each application, verifying doctors' letters,
checking doctors' licenses with the state medical board. To get through the
front door, each person must pass through three security checkpoints.
Members arrive, get their marijuana and take it home to use.

Up the coast in San Francisco, a giant green pot leaf is painted on the
street-level front door of the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers' Club on busy
Market Street.

Inside the 8,000-member club, people pass joints in crowded smoking
lounges, visit the head shop and greet staff members, some of whom wear
green cloth pot-leaf wreaths on their heads. They travel from floor to
floor on the Jerry Garcia Memorial Elevator, and hundreds of origami cranes
in all the colors of the rainbow hang from every ceiling.

Since Californians voted in 1996 to legalize the medicinal use of
marijuana, cannabis clubs have popped up across the state, to get the drug
to those who qualify. But the future of the clubs is in jeopardy.

In recent weeks, state and federal authorities have cracked down on the
clubs -- saying their existence is illegal and unprotected by the
medical-marijuana initiative. On Friday, the U.S. Attorney's Office in San
Francisco began legal action against six Northern California clubs and
their operators, saying they flagrantly violated the Controlled Substances
Act.

California Attorney General Dan Lungren, whose agents raided the San
Francisco club and temporarily got it shut down in August 1996, last month
successfully pushed a state appellate court to declare the club illegal and
reinstate the injunction that closed it. That decision goes into effect
Monday, although a Superior Court still has to reinstate the injunction.

Lungren says he plans to use the decision to close every club in the state.

The looming threat of closure is fracturing the medical-marijuana movement,
whose diverse elements always have barely coexisted.

On the one side are people like Dennis Peron, an author of the initiative
and director of the San Francisco club, who openly tells anyone who asks
that he believes all use of marijuana is medicinal.

On the other are those like Los Angeles club director Scott Imler, who
argues that the only way to continue to supply marijuana to those it can
help is to run very strict and businesslike operations.

``We have more rules than all the other clubs put together,'' Imler said.
``The people who come here have cancer, seizures and epilepsy, multiple
sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease, chronic pain from botched surgeries. Their
problems are not what I would call trivial or marginal or temporary. This
isn't about fun, and this is not the kind of club you want to be a member
of.''

Proposition 215, the medical-marijuana initiative passed with 56 percent of
the vote in November 1996 -- does not legalize cannabis clubs. In fact, it
does not provide for a method for patients to get the drug. It states
simply that marijuana can be used medically in the treatments of AIDS,
cancer, anorexia, chronic pain, spasticity, glaucoma, arthritis, migraine
``or any other illness for which marijuana provides relief.'' Patients,
with recommendations from their doctors, are granted the right to possess
and cultivate marijuana for medical use, with a doctor's recommendation.
The patients also can pass that right on to designated primary caregivers.

A section of the initiative encourages federal and state authorities to
come up with plans for ``safe and affordable distribution of marijuana,''
but such plans have not been forthcoming.

That angers many club directors, who say sick people would be forced to
approach dealers on the street if the clubs were closed. They are quick to
admit that making marijuana available in pharmacies would be a much better
way to distribute the drug than their clubs, which are forced to buy much
of what they give out from dealers, often at exorbitant prices.

``What has the attorney general done besides raid clubs and try to
prosecute patients?'' said Jeff Jones, director of the 1,000-member Oakland
Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, which was one of the clubs targeted Friday.
``He hasn't offered a single alternative to what we do.''

Not all anger is reserved for the government. Some within the
medical-marijuana movement are increasingly angry at Peron for pushing the
limits of what the authorities might tolerate. State officials say
undercover police have bought marijuana at that club without prescriptions,
have found evidence of club marijuana being resold on the streets, and
witnessed minors on the club premises.

Some club directors believe such lax standards in San Francisco put the
other clubs in jeopardy.

``Dennis is widely credited with being the father of the whole movement,
and, unfortunately for the rest of us, whatever sticks to Peron sticks to
the medical-marijuana issue,'' Imler said.

``We call his club Peron's-town, like Jonestown, which was another San
Francisco-based nightmare. It's a three-ring circus.'' (He was referring to
the 1978 mass suicide in Guyana of more than 900 members of the People's
Temple cult, including leader Jim Jones.)

Hoping to make his club less vulnerable to attack, Imler works closely with
West Hollywood officials, who support him. He carefully tracks every bit of
marijuana he distributes and advocates a policy of total disclosure.

In October, he organized a conference of organizations involved in the
distribution of medical marijuana. Meeting in Santa Cruz, Calif., they
drafted an affirmation of 25 principles, resolving to, among other things,
``diligently verify all applicants,'' ``observe responsible and accountable
business practices'' and ``refrain from behavior and statements blurring
lines between medical and nonmedical use of marijuana.''

Peron's club did not sign on, but 28 other organizations did. Among them
was the Santa Clara County Medical Cannabis Center in San Jose, started by
Peter Baez and Jesse Garcia, who was diagnosed with AIDS six years ago.

Garcia began taking marijuana when his illness led to severe malnutrition.
He was losing weight rapidly. He couldn't eat or digest the drugs he was
prescribed. He had chronic diarrhea, which lasted for more than three years.

``I couldn't get my body to help repair itself,'' he said.

Marijuana changed that, stimulating his appetite.

``My whole health condition made a 180-degree turn. Marijuana changed my
life,'' he said. ``Even my mother quickly noticed the difference. She's a
68-year-old Latino woman. Marijuana isn't something she'd approve of. But
when she saw how I was improving, she said, `Don't stop taking your
medicine.'''

Garcia persuaded Baez to open the center after he found he could no longer
make the trip easily to Peron's club in San Francisco, 85 miles away.

The San Jose club, which does not permit marijuana smoking on its premises,
is housed in a nondescript four-room office, wedged between doctors'
offices in a single-story office block. As in Los Angeles, the club has
worked hard to ease the discomfort of local officials, even going so far as
agreeing to allow law-enforcement authorities to come in without warrants.

On two different occasions, when people came to the center with forged
letters, Baez and Garcia turned them in to police. Both forgers were
prosecuted.

``We don't play games with the rules or the issues. We run a very tight
ship,'' Baez said. ``We had hoped that the authorities would recognize that
when they started talking about shutting clubs down. But it doesn't look
like they're going to make any distinctions.''

Peron is unapologetic about the way he runs his club and unwilling to take
the blame for the crackdown.

``The biggest criticism of what I do is that I allow people to hang out and
enjoy the atmosphere,'' he said. ``I don't see anything wrong with that.
They're sick and they're suffering. Why not let them experience a little
joy?''

``If I could go to jail and allow the rest of these clubs to continue to
serve sick and dying people, I surely would. But in the end it's not just
me they're after, it's all of us.''