BELEAGUERED SAN JOSE POT CLUBS ENDURE EVERYTHING FROM OFFICIAL
CHALLENGES TO BAD JOKES

Reggae music rolled like a cloud across a large room filled with
blond wood, and behind the bar at the Arc Healing Center, Hector
Gonzalez watched as Chris Braun, 23, entered wearing a green velvet
top hat, green sunglasses and a clutch of fake emerald necklaces. It
was nearly noon Wednesday, a few hours before the gutters of San Jose
would fill with green beer recycled by St. Patrick's Day celebrants
at the city's 1,300 purveyors of alcohol.

But as he bellied up to the bar at the West Julian Street medical
marijuana cooperative, Braun asked his "budtender" about an
assortment of smokable cannabis - glittering from a jewel-case-like
display - with names like Mr. Frosty, Train Wreck, Afghan Diesel and
Purple Kush. He joined the 7-week-old marijuana collective with a
note from his doctor, seeking relief from pain caused by ulcerative colitis.

There has been plenty of pain to go around. Cannabis clubs have been
causing the city's code enforcement division so much distress that
officials recently began threatening the landlords of clubs about
which the city received complaints - even if they didn't involve any
specific code violations - with daily fines up to $2,500. The letters
resulted in the eviction of the city's first medical marijuana
dispensary, San Jose Cannabis Buyers Collective.

The club, which was the only one in the city requiring its members to
be 21 or older and wait two days before receiving their first dose,
quickly reopened at a new location near the airport. The club charged
the city with "illegal tactics," and at a rally protesting the
crackdown Friday, it was suggested that San Jose is at war with its
cannabis clubs, which have sprouted in the absence of a city
ordinance outlawing them.

'Not at War'

"We're not at war," said Mike Hannon, head of code enforcement and
author of the warning letters to landlords. "It's not that we don't
want to welcome medical marijuana dispensaries in San Jose. We just
haven't had a chance to try to figure out where we want them, and how
many we want."

Hannon has found his department's attempt to shut down the marijuana
clubs a lot like herding kittens. "I'm kind of surprised, to be
honest with you, that they would simply stop at one location and move
to another," he said.

Hannon, Gonzalez and the owners of the displaced Cannabis Buyers
Collective will have a chance to air their opinions of each other
March 30. That's when the San Jose City Council convenes to decide
the fate of Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio's proposed ordinance that
would regulate the clubs.

Oliverio urged the city to take action in late October, hoping to
head off a proliferation of cannabis clubs like the one that has spun
out of control in Los Angeles. By some estimates, Los Angeles now has
more marijuana clinics than Starbucks.

Bake Sale

"L.A. allowed sleaziness to run rampant," said Andy Schwaderer, who
runs the nonprofit Pharmers Health Center, a cannabis collective off
De Anza Boulevard. "San Jose has a real opportunity to make sure that
doesn't happen. But for every day they leave it open, they're
inviting a situation where they have a thousand of them. Then what
are you going to do?"

Oliverio visited a collective in Oakland that generates $20 million a
year in revenue. Now subject to Oakland's new ordinance, the club
will write a check to the cash-strapped East Bay city for $360,000,
and provide an additional $200,000 in sales tax. For San Jose, the
6th District councilman is proposing a tax rate of 3 percent, nearly
double Oakland's.

"Let's just face it, have an ordinance in place that limits the
number of them, and figure out a way to make revenue from it," he
said. "If it means I can keep the libraries open one or two extra
days, I don't have a problem with that."

Chris Braun doesn't either. He's watched the cannabis clubs in San
Jose go from zero to nearly 60 in just over seven months. "It has
gotten a bit extreme lately," he said. "Dispensaries have been
popping up everywhere. Five or 10 would be more than sufficient."

Braun's illness prevents him from ingesting the drug through Arc's
high THC concentrate organic olive oil, or the marijuana-laced Chica
Diva Chocolates. And though one of the few regulations currently
governing the medical marijuana clubs in San Jose prohibits him from
smoking the stuff on the overstuffed sofa, or at one of the tables
often filled with people working at their laptops - just like
Starbucks - if Braun wants to read the latest copy of Weed World,
it's there for him.

So is Gonzalez, who in many ways represents the new face of the
medical marijuana movement. He avoids the term "pot club."

"I'm redeveloping my vocabulary," said Gonzalez, who quit a job in
real estate to open a new business that he views as "cutting edge."
His fiance, Juanita Martinez, is the club's receptionist, and his
father, Henry, comes over from Juniper Systems - where he's a manager
- - on his lunch hour to help out.

Hector's mother can often be found in the 5,500-square-foot
warehouse, where the business will expand if it takes off as he expects.

Surprisingly, it is the cannabis clubs most eagerly embracing
regulation. "I'm personally conservative by nature," Gonzalez said.
"I don't enjoy working in the gray areas. That's why we're working to
get a regulation in place."

Tokes and Jokes

Already in San Jose, there are clubs with names such as Amsterdam's
Garden, conjuring images of Europe's leading marijuana haven.

"We don't think that helps our cause at all," said Schwaderer. "Our
biggest fear is that too many people without the right intentions
will be opening up and screw things up for everybody."

Gonzalez, who prefers the term "medicine" or "cannabis," knows the
subject of cannabis clubs inspires giggling.

"It brings baggage to the issue," he said. "The tie-dye wearing,
V-dub driving, Grateful Dead-following hippie pothead. That's an
image that's been associated with cannabis for a long time."

And, of course, there are people with doctor's notes who come to the
clubs just hoping to get wasted.

"There are some people who slip through the cracks and are able to
get their cannabis club cards without legitimately needing them,"
Braun said. "But for the people who do legitimately need it, it's
very important. My mother has hers, and she doesn't even smoke. She
comes in here solely to get (cannabis) lotion for her arthritis. She
never smoked pot before in her life."

Tired of Fighting

One young mother of two, who declined to give her name, said she had
just come from her morning workout at the gym. "I'm a fully
functioning mother, I have a job, I work out," she said. "And I'm a
Christian." She said the marijuana, which she smokes at home,
relieves her depression and anxiety from attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder.

She uses a $600 Volcano inhaler to turn the marijuana into a vapor.

"Coming here at 11 o'clock during the day, it's nice," she said.
"When you have symptoms that you're trying to treat, you can't really
pick the right strain when you're getting it from someone on the street."

She uses her vaporizer three times a day to keep a slight buzz going.
"I've struggled my whole life to be emotionally healthy," she said,
tucking her prerolled joints into her bag. "I have two kids and I
don't want to pass down anger, and I don't want to be anxious around
them. I fought it for a long time. I thought I could be healthy
through therapy and God's healing, and I've done that. I'm just tired
of fighting the feeling."