SMOKE AND MIRRORS

Pot Clubs Can't Get A Break - New Rules Would Force Many To Close

Compassion and Care Center employee and longtime medical marijuana
activist Wayne Justmann proudly displays a framed "keep up the good
work" letter from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D--San
Francisco) in the second-story medical cannabis dispensary in San
Francisco.

"Patients can sit and relax and get away from the problems of the
world," Justmann told the Guardian in describing this half pharmacy,
half community center, which features AIDS information brochures, a
DSL Internet connection, the makings for peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches, and marijuana priced at $18 for an eighth of an ounce.

The CCC, which has been open both legally and illegally since 1992,
is one of the numerous medical cannabis dispensaries that are having
a hard time getting through the city's onerous approval process.

Under guidelines that the Board of Supervisors approved and the mayor
signed in November 2005, all of the dispensaries have until July 1 to
get the required permits, but none have successfully done so.

The supervisors recently voted to hold off enforcement for the
dispensaries that have already applied for permits, which 26 of the
31 or so clubs had done at press time. Pending legislation by Sup.
Michela Alioto-Pier would set a new deadline of Jan. 1, 2008, while
also effecting procedural changes that could make it difficult for
many facilities to ever get permits. She is proposing more stringent
disability access requirements and wants to give the Mayor's Office
more control over which clubs must abide by them.

Justmann and many others in the medical marijuana community
interviewed by us see the pending legislation as a mixed bag. It
would remove the police inspection from an approval process that now
requires clubs to deal with six city departments, easing some
concerns of proprietors in this quasi-legal business. Yet the
legislation would also require all clubs to meet the Americans with
Disabilities Act's standards for new construction, which could prove
logistically difficult and prohibitively expensive for most
dispensaries, which are in older buildings. For example, the CCC
would need to build an elevator in the aging building where it rents
space.

Alioto-Pier told us the amendment -- which will be heard by the
Planning Commission on July 12 and the board thereafter -- is
necessary to place medical cannabis dispensaries on par with other
medical facilities. "Specifically because they are medical, the
board felt it's important for MCDs to be accessible," she told us.
"It's what I think should have been across the city."

Under the amendment, dispensaries would have to ensure that their
bathrooms, hallways, and front doors were wide enough for wheelchair
access and that they had limited use--limited access elevators, which
would ...

The CCC is accessible only by stairs and does not have the money or
permission to do the work that the amendment would require. "Still, we
provide the necessary services to the patient," Justmann said. He also
cited the financial gamble in spending large sums on a business that --
unlike other health care facilities -- always stands the risk of being
shut down by the federal government.

Stephanie (whom we agreed to identify only by her first name), an
HIV-positive patient of the CCC for the past three years, told us the
new accessibility standards could make affordable marijuana less
accessible. "The places that will be able to be kept open will be
price gougers," she said. "I won't be able to afford it."