Legal Victory For San Francisco Marijuana Club

April 29, 1998 - Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco's main medical marijuana club scored an unexpected legal victory Wednesday when a judge refused California Attorney General Dan Lungren's demand for a legal order to close it down.

Superior Court Judge William Cahill said there was not enough evidence to warrant a restraining order against the club, the main source of marijuana for some 9,000 people suffering from AIDS, cancer and other diseases.

Cahill, who heard lawyers for both sides Tuesday, then scheduled a fresh hearing on the issue for early June.

The decision was hailed by medical marijuana supporters, who have fought to keep the club operating despite repeated efforts by both state and federal officials to close it.

"I'm delighted," said Hazel Rodgers, the 79-year-old who now heads the club.

"It will give us some breathing room and allow us to stay open for a month and allow us to serve our thousands of sick and dying patients."

Officials in Lungren's office, meanwhile, vowed to continue their efforts to run the club out of business.

"The judge says he needs more evidence, we'll be happy to go and get it," said Lungren spokesman Rob Stutzman.

"All we have to establish is that they are selling marijuana, which means they will be breaking the law."

The battle over the San Francisco Cannabis Healing Center marks the latest skirmish over interpretations of California's 1996 law which legalized the medical use of marijuana if prescribed by a doctor.

Lungren says the club has overstepped the limits of the law and has become a "drug house" selling pot to the public at large.

This month he obtained a court order shutting down the club's predecessor -- the San Francisco Cannabis Cultivators Club -- but the organization opened again the next day with a new name on the door.

Club founder and long-time medical marijuana proponent Denis Peron also stepped aside, handing the reins to Rodgers, a grandmother who uses marijuana to treat her glaucoma.

Dismissed by Lungren's office as a "straw person" fronting for Peron, Rodgers is proving to be a sympathetic figure.

"Our patients, and there must be 9,000 of them, if they don't have this place for them to get legal medical marijuana they'll have to become criminals, or at least take chances and do it out on the street," she said after Cahill's ruling.

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