S.F. Eager to Implement New Pot Law

Across the state, law enforcement officials are fretting about the legal nightmare they say California voters created by approving marijuana for medical use.

Except in San Francisco.

Here, officials shrug off worries that the new law--which allows patients to cultivate or possess marijuana for personal medical treatment on the oral or written recommendation of a physician--directly conflicts with federal law that bans the sale or possession of the plant.

“I think we can be a model for the whole state,” said Dist. Atty. Terrence Hallinan, the only prosecutor in the state to publicly support the marijuana initiative during the campaign. “Who else but San Francisco?”

Who else, indeed? The city that gave birth to the beatniks of the 1950s, the Haight-Ashbury counterculture of the ‘60s and the gay rights movement of the ‘70s now is considering licensing marijuana buyers’ clubs and allowing the communal cultivation of marijuana plants.

“I would hope that they would do it inside, but I could see that happening,” Hallinan said of the communal gardens.

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The district attorney scoffed at reports that the federal Drug Enforcement Administration might deputize local law enforcement officials to make federal arrests of people who possess or use small amounts of marijuana.

“They will have a fight on their hands if they try that here,” he said.

San Francisco’s enthusiasm for medical marijuana--72% of the city’s voters supported the initiative, which passed with 54% of the statewide vote--is born of necessity, both officials and believers in the plant’s medicinal properties say.

“This is the largest gay community in the world, and the sickest,” said John Hudson, a founder of the Flower Therapy buyers’ club in San Francisco’s gritty Mission district.

Many AIDS patients insist marijuana helps them battle symptoms of the disease, by controlling nausea and increasing appetite. Others who have claimed benefits from the drug include paralytics who say it reduces muscle spasms, cancer patients who say it eases nausea caused by chemotherapy and glaucoma patients who say it reduces pressure in their eyes. But no medical research has yet verified the anecdotal claims.

The California Medical Assn. has asked the federal government to study marijuana’s medical benefits now that the measure has become law.

In the meantime, the association continues to oppose its medical use and has advised its physicians “not to overtly recommend the use of marijuana to patients,” said Jack Lewin, vice president of the association.

California’s law offers protection to patients, but not to doctors, Lewin said. Physicians who recommend marijuana could risk sanctions from the DEA, which could retaliate by pulling a physician’s license to prescribe medications, he said. The DEA’s response to the law has yet to be shaped.

Hudson said he and managers of the state’s dozen other buyers’ clubs are organizing a conference for physicians at which they will try to clarify what the law allows.

“We will explain their rights and have lawyers there to tell them how to stay out of trouble,” Hudson said.

Even before Proposition 215, hundreds of the state’s physicians for years recommended marijuana despite the legal risks, Hudson said. The California Medical Board said no complaint has ever been filed against a physician for prescribing or recommending medical marijuana to a patient.

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San Francisco is thought to have about 7,000 people infected with AIDS, according to state health officials. Since the epidemic began, 14,886 San Franciscans have died of the disease. The city’s incident rate of 2,792 reported AIDS cases per 100,000 residents is far higher than the state average of 290 per 100,000, according to Jim Creeger, an analyst with the state.

Faced with such numbers, Hudson said, “local politicians recognize the problem and want to help.” Long before Proposition 215 made it to the ballot, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors supported the establishment of buyers’ clubs.

The city’s Cannabis Buyers’ Club was the largest in the nation until it was shut down in August, when state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren initiated a state narcotics raid without informing San Francisco’s police chief or district attorney. Founded by Dennis Peron, the club claimed 12,000 card-carrying members. Members could choose from several grades of marijuana and smoke it on the premises or carry it out.

Lungren has charged that it was nothing more than a glorified drug-dealing outlet that sold marijuana to minors and to undercover agents without checking their physician’s recommendation--a club requirement for obtaining marijuana.

Peron and five other club officials, including Hudson, were indicted on charges of conspiracy to illegally transport and sell marijuana. They face trial in Alameda County later this month.

Hudson and some of the Cannabis Club’s founders opened Flower Therapy in September. Hudson says the new club has 800 members. Since the initiative passed, he said, applications have surged.

“Before it passed, we took in five or 10 people a day,” Hudson said. “After it passed, we started taking in 20 to 25 a day. People are beginning to get over their paranoia and starting to sign up.”

No signs point out the club, two blocks off Mission Street and next to a car repair garage. A door in a windowless brick wall is answered by a slight, long-haired man who checks membership cards or doctor’s authorization forms.

Once inside, new applicants are asked to fill out forms that include a medical history and to present a doctor’s authorization. They are photographed and issued identification cards that advise law enforcement officials to call the club for verification that the carrier is using marijuana for medical purposes.

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Members are then allowed into an inner room where small plastic bags of marijuana and an array of baked goods are on display at a glass counter.

Cookies, brownies and cupcakes laced with marijuana sell two for $5. An eighth of an ounce of the cheapest grade of marijuana, Mexican B, sells for $8; the most expensive grade of California Green costs $60 for an eighth of an ounce.

Once they buy the marijuana, buyers may head toward the club’s largest room, where they can smoke.

On a recent day, just two members sat on overstuffed couches in the smoking room, its air thick with the sweet smell of burning marijuana.

“I’ve been smoking it since the ‘60s to relieve stress and depression,” said Harold, a bespectacled, middle-aged man who sat on a sofa, smoking a joint. He declined to give his last name.

“We’ve had people call and say they are moving to California because this law has passed,” said Beth Moore, former director of the Cannabis Buyers’ Club. Moore, a 41-year-old AIDS patient, is among those under indictment. Despite a restraining order prohibiting her from involvement with marijuana buyers’ clubs, she said, she helped found Flower Therapy, where she is a member and a user of marijuana.

“I don’t find that people are confused” about what the law allows, she said. “They are mostly just rejoicing that they don’t have to hide anymore and feel like criminals.”

But Hudson welcomes some regulation by the city, saying he worries that unscrupulous people, whom he called “carpetbaggers,” may try to open clubs for profit and sell inferior products at high prices.

“I welcome San Francisco licensing clubs, because it would make sure that everybody who is trying to set up one of these things is not in it for the money,” Hudson said.

Peron, meanwhile, says he and others are looking for warehouse space to start the communal growing of marijuana plants for people too sick to grow their own.

The new law, he pointed out, allows designated caregivers of patients to cultivate marijuana for their use. So why not bring caregivers together to grow the plants more efficiently?

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“The people know what they voted for. They voted for the right of sick people to use marijuana,” Peron said. “The only people who are confused seem to be the politicians.”

Hallinan said he hopes to come up with proposals on licensing and inspecting marijuana buyers’ clubs for the Board of Supervisors soon. The rest of the state, he said, should take similar steps.

“They should look at the way we in San Francisco have dealt with this for the last few years,” Hallinan said.

Mayor Willie Brown has been less outspoken than Hallinan on the issue, but a spokesman said the mayor wants to see that sick people who need marijuana obtain it safely.

“Certainly, we were ahead of the state in terms of where our public officials stood on this issue,” said P. J. Donovan, a spokesman for Brown. “Now the rest of the state is catching up with San Francisco.”