ACTIVIST'S TACTICS ANGER MANY IN MEDICAL MARIJUANA MOVEMENT

Treatment: Dennis Peron's Provocative Style Fuels Legal Battles That
Threaten Sick People's Right To Get The Drug, Other Pot Providers Say.

SAN FRANCISCONibbling Christmas cookies in his Cannabis Cultivators Club,
marijuana guru Dennis Peron says he can't understand why he has become a
pariah in the medical marijuana movement he helped to found.

"It was my behavior that started this," the whitehaired Peron says
indignantly. "Now they are telling me, 'You've got to go away.' "

Those wishing Peron would go awayor at least adopt a lower profileare
founders of some of the nearly 20 clubs now selling medical marijuana to
patients in more than half a dozen California counties. They say that
Peron's provocative style and the kind of club he runs have fueled the
legal battle that is endangering them all.

"We've had to pay a high price all along for the circuslike atmosphere in
San Francisco," said Scott Imler, director of the Los Angeles Cannabis
Resource Center in West Hollywood. "Dennis goes marching off on his way of
folly, making [bad] law every step of the way, and everybody else has to
just lump it. It's incredibly frustrating to all of us."

A state appellate court ruling earlier this month is the immediate trigger
for the anger toward Peron. The court ruled that Proposition 215the
medical marijuana initiative approved by voters in November 1996did not
make cannabis clubs legal.

State Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren's office says the ruling means that Peron must
shut his doors by Jan. 12, when the decision goes into effect.

What frightens other club operators is that Lungren is insisting that the
ruling applies to the rest of the state's clubs.

"We read this decision as saying that cannabis clubs are no longer legal in
the state," said Lungren spokesman Matt Ross. "We will advise district
attorneys and law enforcement officials of each county of that."

But other club operators say their lawyers tell them that the ruling
applies only to Peron's club, which is unique.

The appellate ruling grew out of an injunction Lungren obtained to shut
down Peron's club in August 1996. A Superior Court judge lifted the
injunction after Proposition 215 passed, ruling that the new law allowed
clubs to serve as "primary caregivers" and sell medical marijuana on a
nonprofit basis.

When the injunction was lifted, Peron reopened his club, and it now serves
about 8,000 clients near San Francisco's Civic Center in a fivestory,
30,000squarefoot building decorated in what has been described as "high
crash pad." The club opened in 1994.

Thousands of colorful origami birds dangle from mobiles on each floor. The
music of choice is hard rock. The blinking lights of two Christmas trees
seem timid compared to the bold green colors of jungle murals that cover
the walls.

Dozens of people can be found toking up most days, and the air is always
thick with the unmistakable smell of marijuana. The club sells about 50
pounds of marijuana a week, some from its basement cultivation project,
most from growers in Northern California whom Peron contracts with to grow
various grades of marijuana.

On Dec. 12, the appellate court found that only individuals who are
consistently responsible for a patient are primary caregivers, rejecting
Peron's argument that his club qualifies as the primary caregiver for
medical marijuana users who so designate it.

Club operators point out that although Peron has butted heads with Lungren
and drug officers, their much smaller facilities are operating quietly in
communities as conservative as San Jose and Thousand Oaks. Medical
marijuana distributors in those cities say they cooperate with local police
and elected officials and run operations that feel more like clinics than
clubs.

"We're literally a doctor's office with a pharmacy," said Peter Baez,
executive director of the Santa Clara County Medical Cannabis Center in San
Jose.

San Jose passed an ordinance several months ago regulating the operation of
the cannabis center. A San Jose police officer inspects the facility
regularly.

Unlike Peron's club, the San Jose facility allows no smoking on its
premises, Baez said.

"Patients register with our secretary, she pulls their file and walks them
to the back office," he said.

"They choose from a board what we have available and we attach an Rx label
to the bag." All records are made available for police inspection.

"We've turned over three attempted forgeries of prescriptions to the
district attorney for prosecution," Baez said. One source of friction
between the center and local authorities, Baez said, is a city requirement
that the marijuana the club sells be grown at the center, to avoid clashing
with federal laws prohibiting the transport of marijuana.

The center's landlord has forbidden such cultivation, he said, and the
center is too small to grow enough plants anyway. So Baez continues to buy
street marijuana, sometimes from Peron, to supply his 225 patients.

Baez says that he too worries that Peron's operation is causing trouble for
everyone.

"It does hurt the effort," Baez said. "Every time a news crew does a story
on us, they always have clips of San Francisco, showing a bunch of
weirdlooking people smoking dope. My stomach cringes."

Peron makes no apologies. A Vietnam veteran, Peron for years was the dope
dealer of choice for San Francisco's gay community.

He lost a lover to AIDS and said he came up with the idea of a cannabis
club six years ago, while serving a sentence for felony possession of
marijuana he said he bought to ease his dying lover's pain.

"Jonathan was covered with sores and was a pariah before he died," Peron
said. "I dreamed of building a place where people like Jonathan would feel
welcomed, would feel accepted."

In liberal San Francisco, hit hard by the AIDS epidemic, Peron's club was
embraced by city officials when it opened.

Both AIDS patients and cancer patients say that marijuana eases nausea
caused by their drug regimens and helps them keep their appetites. Others
say the drug can prevent epileptic seizures, ease headaches and control
spasms.

Peron, who insists that "all marijuana use is medical" and says that
smoking it helps him control alcoholism, has vowed to appeal the 1st
District Court's ruling to the state Supreme Court.

He says that state drug officials will have to drag him and the club's
patrons out if the Supreme Court rules against the cannabis club.

"There is a deeper issue here, of who we are and where we are going," Peron
said. "Do we have a say in America or not?"

Peron is not alone in his frustration at the way state and federal
officials have reacted to passage of Proposition 215, the first state
initiative in the nation legalizing marijuana.

On the federal level, the Drug Enforcement Administration has threatened
doctors who might prescribe the drug. On the state level, Lungren keeps a
running count of prosecutions brought for possession or sale of marijuana
where the defense has cited Proposition 215.

Local government officials complain that although the state is quick to say
what is not allowed under Proposition 215, they have gotten no guidance on
how to legally implement the law.

In San Mateo County, Supervisor Mike Nevin, a retired San Francisco police
officer, has proposed that the county get into the business of supplying
medical marijuana.

"It is clear that we need some state direction in getting marijuana to the
sick and the dying," Nevin said. "We need to be sensitive and figure out a
way to carry out Proposition 215. I understand what the appellate court is
saying about cannabis clubs," he said.

"But that decision still leaves us with the dilemma of how to carry out the
spirit of 215, with how to deal with the problem of cultivation and
distribution."

Nevin's solution? San Mateo should hand over the marijuana it confiscates
from street dealers to county pharmacists and let them supply to anyone
with a doctor's recommendation. It is a proposal that sparked some interest
from Lungren before the appellate court ruling came down.

"The program that I am suggesting would take the whole profit motive out of
this," Nevin said. "It would limit distribution to the very, very sick. It
takes away the whole underground, seedy aspect."

Nevin met once with Lungren to discuss his proposal, which has won informal
backing from his colleagues on the Board of Supervisors, who formed a
committee to study it.

He said he has promised Lungren that the county would couple the plan with
an aggressive antidrug education effort in the county's schools.

"My police experience gave me a practical aspect to life," Nevin said.
"You've got a law on the books that says that marijuana is legal for
medicinal purposes. But there is no leadership."

Lungren vigorously opposed Proposition 215 during the campaign and has
repeatedly said that voters didn't know what they were voting for. Since
the election, the attorney general has taken the position that it is up to
each county to decide on implementation of the initiative, said Ross, the
Lungren spokesman.

Across the state, the countybycounty response to Proposition 215 has
varied wildly.

In Orange County, one volunteer at the county's only cannabis club is in
jail, facing felony charges for possession and sale of marijuana. The club
operates on an ad hoc basis, meeting patients in restaurants or at their
homes to avoid local authorities.

In Thousands Oaks, city officials recently agreed to let a club operate out
of a shopping mall.

"There's just a lot of confusion out there," Baez said. "It is a
nerveracking situation."

"Where there is a little more need and a little more tolerance, the
providers have felt comfortable coming out and being public with what they
are doing," said Dave Fratello, spokesman for Americans for Medical Rights,
a group campaigning for passage of state laws legalizing medical marijuana.

Fratello said his group anticipates four election battles in 1998in
Maine, Alaska, the District of Columbia and Coloradoin the push to
legalize medical marijuana.

Ultimately, he said, the goal is to change federal laws to reclassify
marijuana as a legal drug. It is in that nationwide effort, Fratello says,
that Peron's inyourface style hurts.

"Many people consider him to be the prophet of the movement," he said.

"Dennis is a revolutionary, and more power to him. But most clubs run
screaming from that image. Most are nonsmoking facilities. That's because
in most cases, we're talking about an emergency service for real patients
in need and there is no time for a revolution."

Copyright Los Angeles Times