San Francisco's Political Potboiler

By William Claiborne
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 17, 1998; Page A03

LOS ANGELES, April 16 — In most cities, a Superior Court judge's order to local law enforcement officials to shut down an illegal marijuana cultivators' club would seem to be enough to get the job done. But not necessarily so in freewheeling San Francisco.

Both the county sheriff and the district attorney in San Francisco are outspokenly in favor of legalized marijuana for medicinal use. The director of the health department has even suggested having city health workers distribute the drug to patients who need it for relief of pain.

San Francisco's reputation as a municipal iconoclast and proving ground for unconventional ideas got a major boost today when County Sheriff Michael Hennessey refused to padlock the controversial Cannabis Cultivators' Club as ordered Wednesday by Superior Court Judge David Garcia.

"I feel that many people benefit from medical marijuana and that this organization provides a valuable service," Hennessey said in a telephone interview. "I don't know if they did step over the line, but no official in San Francisco, including me, wants to put them out of business," added Hennessey, a Democrat who has been elected to the county's top law enforcement job five times.

The sheriff said the city attorney's office, which itself has already sued the federal Drug Enforcement Administration to prevent it from punishing physicians who recommend marijuana for medicinal use, interpreted Garcia's order as giving him the option of declining to shut down the club and turning that responsibility over to the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement. But Hennessey said he will not even ask the state drug agency to act in his place, as provided for in the court's order, and instead will attempt to negotiate a settlement with the court in which the cannabis club could remain open.

Even if the sheriff's deputies or state narcotics agents did move against the club, the task of prosecuting its operators would fall to District Attorney Terence Hallinan, a self-described "Old Prog" who long has advocated decriminalizing marijuana and who has said, "We're all together on wanting to make [medical marijuana] work in San Francisco."

The year-long legal battle over the use of medical marijuana, which California voters approved in a 1996 referendum, came to a head when Garcia ordered the immediate closure of the cannabis club, which was founded by oft-busted pot dealer Dennis Peron.

Garcia, basing his decision on an appellate court ruling last December, said that the 1996 ballot initiative allows only patients and their immediate caregivers to cultivate and possess marijuana. The judge said that the law does not allow clubs like Peron's to sell or give marijuana to other clubs or caregivers, as Peron admitted his outlet was doing.

Garcia's "nuisance abatement order" calls for either the San Francisco County Sheriff's Department or the state Bureau of Narcotics to close Peron's psychedelically decorated downtown emporium immediately and seize its contents. But complicating the order is the fact that the club is also the headquarters for Peron's maverick campaign for the Republican nomination for governor – and that his opponent in the June 2 primary is Attorney General Dan Lungren, who is the Republican frontrunner in the gubernatorial race.

Lungren, a law-and-order conservative who has long opposed efforts to legalize marijuana, said if Hennessey fails to act against the club, he will.

"We will make sure the court's injunction is enforced," Matt Ross, Lungren's press secretary, said today, thereby setting the stage for the attorney general being forced to shut down his primary rival's campaign headquarters. Ross declined to say when state narcotics officers plan to move against the cannabis club.

Peron, whose club was closed by Lungren's narcotics agents for five months in 1996 before the statewide referendum allowed it to reopen, remained defiant as ever. "If they want to pull another Waco here, let them bring in the state narcs. We're not closing down this place," said Peron, referring to the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., by federal law enforcement officers.

Peron said that about a dozen sufferers of AIDS and cancer are living in the cannabis club and that a raid by state narcotics agents will only result in the spectacle of emaciated and terminally ill patients being forcibly removed from their beds.

In a long-shot effort aimed at circumventing the court order, Peron said he dissolved the Cannabis Cultivators' Club last night and renamed it the San Francisco Cannabis Healing Center, located in the same five-story building near City Hall and staffed by the same volunteers.

"We'll redecorate it, and if they want to come and arrest the building, they can do that. They're just the same old spoiled sports who opposed the ballot initiative and want to defeat it with a technicality," Peron said.