Cannabis Club Backers Seek Alternatives

Spurred by a federal court ruling ordering six Northern California cannabis clubs to close, medical marijuana advocates joined state and local officials Monday in calling for a search for alternative ways to get pot to sick people.

State Sen. John Vasconcellos announced that he will sponsor a May 26 summit in Sacramento to study other ways to distribute the drug. The Santa Clara Democrat was joined Monday by police, prosecutors and public health officials who say they want to make the medical marijuana law approved by California work.

“It is very clear to me that, under Proposition 215, the majority of the people here in California want to have seriously ill people have access to medical marijuana,” said Santa Clara County Dist. Atty. George Kennedy, who is president of the California District Attorneys Assn.

“The best way to work it out is for law enforcement to work with public health and other officials to try and implement the will of the people.”

The 1996 state initiative said AIDS patients and others can use marijuana with a doctor’s recommendation. State and federal prosecutors, however, have launched a legal war against clubs selling the drug.

Vasconcellos said that the law “has been under siege” and that state officials must show voters that “we heard their voice and hope to uphold the law they passed.”

“We want to find a way that provides safe access that doesn’t allow for diversion to nonmedicinal purposes,” he said Monday.

In Orange County, advocates of medicinal marijuana use say they fear the Northern California ruling will have a ripple effect.

Lawyer John Alexander, who represents Martin Chavez, the director of Garden Grove’s cannabis club, said: “Given the prosecutorial zeal I’ve seen,” the result could be negative.

Chavez, the head of the Doctor, Patient, Nurse Support Group, is awaiting trial on marijuana charges. He and another club member, Jack Schachter, were arrested last month on charges of trying to buy marijuana from undercover police officers. Club member David Lee Herrick was convicted last week on two felony counts of selling marijuana.

In San Francisco, Dist. Atty. Terence Hallinan is trying to devise a way for the city to distribute marijuana to patients that will not provoke either the U.S. Justice Department or state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren.

Hallinan said he was encouraged that U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, in his ruling last week ordering the six Northern California clubs to close, left the door open for the city to fashion its own distribution plan.

The prosecutor said Judge Breyer noted in his ruling that the federal government has not filed suit against San Francisco for allowing the distribution of clean hypodermic needles to addicts, although that distribution violates federal law.

Hallinan said the judge was hinting that the same might hold true if San Francisco were to find a more low-profile way to distribute marijuana.

He said he has met with Mayor Willie Brown and with health department officials to discuss ways that the city and county of San Francisco could distribute marijuana through its health department.

“My feeling is that if it is done properly, by a health department, and supervised and run as Breyer says--tightly--the federal government will pass on it, as they do with the needle exchange,” Hallinan said. “What they are really after is to close down these centers.”

In Los Angeles, Jonathan Fielding, the county director of public health, said he is watching San Francisco’s efforts and will attend the Sacramento summit.

“We are certainly anxious in this county to avoid some of the issues and problems that have occurred in Northern California,” Fielding said. Los Angeles County’s only medical marijuana club--the Los Angeles Cannabis Club--is not named in Breyer’s ruling, which takes effect this week.

Breyer said the clubs must close because their sales of marijuana violate federal drug laws. His ruling means that federal drug enforcement officials can raid the clubs at any time. Although the judge mentioned only the Northern California clubs, the U.S. Justice Department has notified federal prosecutors statewide that the six other clubs operating across the state should close voluntarily, in light of the order.

Operators of cannabis clubs in Berkeley and San Francisco have said they will remain open and risk being held in contempt of court.

There have been no official attempts to close the Garden Grove club, which requires members to have written authorization from a physician to use marijuana.

But attorney Alexander said: “I find it tremendously tragic that folks like Lungren, who say they represent the people, are trying to end-run the will of the people.

“To deny relief to suffering people is barbaric,” he said. “To incarcerate someone who helps provide that relief is equally inhuman.”

Times staff writer Tini Tran contributed to this report.