Backers of Medical Marijuana Hold Rally in San Francisco

Medical marijuana advocates prayed, marched and rallied downtown Tuesday in support of the state’s cannabis clubs as the federal government asked a U.S. District Court judge to shut them down.

Nearly 200 people marched on Market Street to the federal building, where they were cheered by San Francisco Dist. Atty. Terence Hallinan, who has vowed that the city will supply medical marijuana to patients if its cannabis clubs are shuttered.

Medical marijuana supporters rolled and lighted joints and sold marijuana-laced cookies on the steps of the federal building as police stood by.

“If they close down the clubs, we’ll go underground,” vowed Somayah Moore-Kamhui, who was selling what she said were organic marijuana cookies. Moore-Kamhui said she is a member of the Crescent Alliance Self-Help group for sickle cell anemia victims.

“We will just go back to doing what we did before Proposition 215,” said Moore-Kamhui, who said she suffers from the disease. “We will sneak into hospitals to get these to patients, if we have to. This is a revolution, and we are not going to stop.”

Inside the federal building, Judge Charles Breyer heard arguments from attorneys defending the clubs and Justice Department attorneys who were asking him to issue an injunction against six Northern California marijuana centers. He did not rule.

“This case is not about Proposition 215,” said Mark Quinlivan, arguing for the Department of Justice. “What this case is about is the upholding of federal law.”

But William Panzer, arguing for the Oakland Cannabis Club, said the federal government for years “has arbitrarily and capriciously” suppressed or ignored studies that showed marijuana to be a safe drug with medicinal uses.

Attorneys for other clubs argued that federal law may be violated to prevent a greater harm, such as the death of some patients deprived of marijuana; that privacy rights allow seriously ill patients access to drugs that will relieve their pain and possibly sustain their lives; that if the marijuana is grown and distributed solely within the state, the federal government has no jurisdiction over it.

California voters in November 1996 approved Proposition 215, which said that chronically ill patients with a doctor’s recommendation could grow and use marijuana for medicinal purposes. The law also says that a primary caregiver may provide the drug to ill patients.

Club operators say they act as primary caregivers in providing the drug to thousands of patients who otherwise have no safe way to purchase it. But in separate cases in the state and federal courts, the Justice Department and state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren have argued that Proposition 215 did not legalize the clubs and that the clubs are not primary caregivers for their clients.

In January, the federal government filed its civil suit against six cannabis clubs--four in the Bay Area, one in Eureka and one in Santa Cruz--seeking to close them for allegedly violating the federal Controlled Substances Act, which prohibits the sale of marijuana. Undercover agents allegedly purchased marijuana in each of the six clubs. The Eureka club and the Flower Therapy club in San Francisco closed, and the cases against the other four clubs were consolidated into the case heard Tuesday by Judge Breyer.

In February, the California Supreme Court let stand a lower court decision in a case that Lungren had brought against the Cannabis Buyers Club in San Francisco that Proposition 215 did not provide the right to sell the drug and did not allow a commercial enterprise to supply marijuana as a primary caregiver.

The mayors of San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Cruz and West Hollywood wrote a joint letter to President Clinton last week, protesting the federal government’s efforts to close the club.

Patients who say they need to smoke or eat marijuana to relieve chronic pain, control glaucoma or maintain their appetites packed Breyer’s courtroom Tuesday. Some were in wheelchairs. Others hobbled in aided by canes.

In a city where thousands of people suffer from AIDs, the fight to secure a supply of marijuana for patients is cast as a moral and spiritual crusade by some advocates.

“The sick are under siege, and people of faith must respond,” the Rev. Karen Oliveto, pastor of San Francisco’s Bethany United Methodist Church, said at a medical marijuana prayer breakfast Tuesday morning. Oliveto said her congregation would help distribute marijuana if the clubs are shut, as it did two years ago when state drug enforcement officials raided the Cannabis Buyers Club and closed it for several months.

But even as medical marijuana supporters in San Francisco vowed to fight on, the director of the Santa Clara County Medicinal Cannabis Club--a club many looked to as a model of a well-run cannabis distribution center--was arrested in San Jose on suspicion of illegally selling marijuana.

Peter Baez was arrested Monday night on suspicion of selling marijuana and released Tuesday on bail, a San Jose Police Department spokesman said. Baez is suspected of selling marijuana to a client who allegedly provided no documentation that he was ill or that a physician had recommended that he use marijuana for medicinal purposes, Sgt. Chris Moore said.