DRUG POLICY: POT-CLUB PARANOIA

Marijuana is alive and well in the Sunset District - just not the
legal kind. San Francisco police bust illegal grow houses on the
city's west side with a comforting regularity, but one must travel a
minimum of two miles to find the nearest medicinal cannabis dispensary.

This dearth of legal green is not likely to change, if the story of
the Bay Area Compassionate Health Center (BACH) is any indication.
BACH wishes to do business on Taraval at 32nd Avenue, but since it
signed a five-year lease in November, neighbors and merchants along
the corridor, the local police captain, and the Sunset's elected
representative, Supervisor Carmen Chu, have all come out against the club.

The safe money is against BACH opening at that location, as city
planners listen when neighbors object. But there's now fear among
pot advocates that BACH might foul the waters for clubs citywide,
after earning Chu's ire.

Currently, a fast-food restaurant or an American Apparel store must
jump through more permitting hoops to open its doors than a pot
club. Those merchants must get what's called a conditional use
permit, which often has a host of extra requirements tacked on. The
upshot: Conditional use permits are stricter and tougher to get than
the discretionary review permits required for pot clubs.

So what if pot clubs needed to get the stricter permits? Earlier
this year, staffers from Chu's office and the Planning Department
gave a detailed presentation to a city-appointed pot advisory group
on what that would mean. "They said, 'We've been working together
to change the [medical cannabis dispensary permitting] process,'"
said David Goldman, president of the local chapter of Americans for
Safe Access, who attended the meeting.

Chu has not introduced any legislation, but did tell SF Weekly that
tougher rules citywide on pot dispensaries are "a potential option."
"I think whenever you open any business, you would want to have the
tools to be able to enforce things when things go wrong," she said.

Still, some pot advocates think Chu has had a hand in fomenting the
opposition to BACH, and ask why a change is needed at all. The Green
Cross, after all, went to delivery-only after neighborhood
opposition scuttled its existing site on Valencia and a proposed one
at Fisherman's Wharf. They note that Chu was one of two supervisors
to vote against creation of a new medical marijuana advisory board,
and that she told the Examiner that she's considering a moratorium
on new pot clubs.

"To me," said Paul Hansbury, one of BACH's operators, "that sounds
like a closed mind."