FEDERAL POT RAID HAS SF PROSECUTORS WORRIED

SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco prosecutors are expressing concern about a
marijuana raid carried out at a cannabis club in the city today by federal
drug agents.

San Francisco District Attorney's Office spokesman Fred Gardner said he
could supply only a few details, but confirmed that agents from the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration apparently moved in on a Sixth Street club
located between Market and Mission streets early this morning. The agents
are also going after an East Bay activist, among other possible enforcement
actions today, he said.

In November, San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan held a news
conference in support of a Northern California doctor whose offices had
been raided by DEA agents and specifically warned federal officials to stay
away from a city that has for years supported physician-authorized use of
medicinal marijuana.

'Lay off our marijuana clubs," Hallinan said at the time.

He said that since the passage of state Proposition 215 five years ago the
city's system -- in which seriously ill patients whose doctors feel they
can benefit from marijuana to reduce pain or increase appetite receive
official identification cards -- is working.

'The police live happily with our law," he concluded to cheers from the
throngs of medicinal marijuana supporters on the steps of the Hall of Justice.

But federal officials may take a different view of the situation. In May,
the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers'
Cooperative that federal anti-drug laws do not permit an exception for
these types of marijuana uses.