A SAN FRANCISCO TOURIST MECCA SOON TO FEATURE A CANNABIS CLUB

Fisherman's Wharf will be the first popular site to have a medical
marijuana dispensary, and some are fighting to keep it out.

SAN FRANCISCO - The newest attraction planned for Fisherman's Wharf,
San Francisco's most popular tourist destination, has no sign, no
advertisements and not even a scrap of sourdough. Yet everyone seems
to think the new business, the Green Cross, will be a hit, drawing
customers from all over the region to sample its pungent wares.

For some, that is exactly the problem.

The Green Cross is a cannabis club, one of scores that sell marijuana
to patients with a doctor's note. They have sprouted up around
California in the decade since the passage of Proposition 215, which
legalized the use and sale of marijuana to those with chronic pain,
illness or infirmity. San Francisco, a hot spot in the AIDS epidemic,
has about 30 clubs serving about 25,000 patients and caregivers.

But none of San Francisco's medical marijuana dispensaries, as they
are formally known, have been in places anywhere as popular as
Fisherman's Wharf, where most people come to enjoy chowder,
Ghirardelli chocolate or cable cars. Now, with the opening of the
club just weeks away, some residents and merchants are fighting to keep it out.

"The city is saturated with pot clubs," said T. Wade Randlett, the
president of SF SOS, a group that opposes the planned club.
"Fisherman's Wharf is a tourism attraction, and this is not the kind
of tourism we're trying to attract."

Emboldened by a series of regulations passed last fall by the city's
Board of Supervisors, some neighborhoods are resisting new marijuana
dispensaries, which they say attract crime and dealers bent on
reselling the drugs. In the debate over the new rules last year,
several neighborhoods successfully lobbied to be exempted from having clubs.

The opening of the proposed dispensary also comes at a time when
medical marijuana's legal standing is murky. Last summer, the U.S.
Supreme Court upheld federal authority to prosecute the possession
and use of marijuana for medical purposes, despite voter-approved
laws allowing medical marijuana in California and nearly a dozen
other states. That decision prompted California to stop issuing
identification cards to patients, for fear of opening state workers
up to federal charges. (Patients, who need a doctor's recommendation
to get marijuana, can still be issued cards by San Francisco and
other California cities.)

Clubs in San Francisco now must go through a permit process, which
includes public hearings, and the proposed dispensary at Fisherman's
Wharf is the first to have done so. A hundred people packed a
neighborhood meeting on June 13, peppering the club's owner, Kevin
Reed, with questions. Reed said he had spent tens of thousands of
dollars on security and other expenses to make the new club a model
for marijuana dispensaries.