Pubdate: Fri, 1 Jul 2005
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Page: A03
Copyright: 2005 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Amy Argetsinger, Washington Post Staff Writer
Cited: Americans for Safe Access http://www.safeaccessnow.org/
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Marijuana - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/San+Francisco

POT-CLUB OWNERS SEEK REGULATION

Medical Marijuana Is Falling into Wrong Hands, Proprietors Fear

SAN FRANCISCO -- Jason Beck stood behind the counter of his modest 
Haight Street storefront and fretted about the rapidly changing marketplace.

For years, he said, he and his fellow merchants tried to hold up 
certain standards, to ensure the good faith of their clients and 
neighbors. But then a bunch of newcomers invaded the market, with no 
heed for tradition. They threatened, he said, to tarnish the entire industry.

"We don't know who they are or what they're representing," said Beck, 
explaining why he has signed on to a movement demanding more city 
oversight of his industry.

And then he took a deep drag of cannabis smoke from a vaporizing 
device. Not a customer in the room batted an eye, all absorbed in 
their own small joints or blunts and wreathed in their own numbingly 
fragrant clouds.

For that is the business Beck wants San Francisco to regulate: selling pot.

Specifically, selling medical marijuana to people whose doctors have 
recommended they use it. Since California voters first approved a 
measure in 1996 permitting sick people to use the drug, scores of 
marijuana dispensaries have opened across the state -- and nowhere 
more so than in San Francisco, the birthplace of the medical cannabis movement.

 From six cannabis clubs in 1999, the city is now home to at least 
43, local officials say.

Yet the rapid growth has become troubling even to advocates of the 
movement. City police complain that medical marijuana is slipping out 
of the clubs and into the hands of recreational users or drug 
dealers. Last week -- not long after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld 
the power of federal prosecutors to charge medical-marijuana users 
even in the 11 states that allow it -- agents raided three of San 
Francisco's clubs, alleging they operated as fronts for larger 
drug-trafficking and money-laundering operations.

Now, as city leaders push for stricter regulation -- imposing a 
six-month moratorium on new clubs while they draw up rules -- they 
have found some of their strongest support comes, surprisingly, from 
club operators themselves.

"We have to assume some responsibility," said Wayne Justmann, a 
pioneer in the pot-club scene. More government oversight would "pave 
the way to legitimacy" for medical marijuana, he said.

"It would be like Good Housekeeping was here," he added, "and we got 
their seal of approval."

Spend some time with San Francisco's club operators and you may feel 
as though you have entered a counterculture chamber of commerce.

The display case at Beck's Alternative Herbal Health Services is like 
something out of an R. Crumb cartoon. Next to the glass vials packed 
with standard, smokeable buds -- strains dubbed Big Sur and Caramela, 
$18 for a gram -- are whimsically packaged food products: 
marijuana-infused peanut butter and jelly, as well as candy bars that 
look like Snickers and Reese's but are labeled "Stoners" and 
"Reefers" for $8 each, or two for $15.

"It's a different delivery system," said Beck, a goateed 27-year-old 
who uses cannabis to control seizures related to his cerebral palsy. 
"Lots of people with emphysema and asthma can't smoke. They find the 
baked goods help them sleep."

Today, though, everyone at Beck's dispensary is smoking -- the 
athletic-looking guy in the knit cap and shorts, the forty-something 
woman in dark glasses and two-inch fingernails. Though patients are 
free to take their cannabis home, many of them choose to smoke at the 
club, and the place has a glazed, sociable feel.

Yet for all the iconoclast trappings, San Francisco marijuana 
distributors like to talk the earnest talk of do-gooder corporate 
citizens and are largely respected as such. Bouncers at the doors 
make visitors show the city-issued cards that certify they have a 
doctor's referral. Police officers walking the beat drop by for 
friendly small talk. One local dispensary won the "best float" prize 
in the neighborhood parade. Beck keeps a framed photo of himself from 
a friendly meeting with the city district attorney; over at the 
Compassion and Care Center, there is a warm letter from House 
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on the wall.

But the fact remains that it is all illegal under federal law. 
Despite last month's Supreme Court ruling, there has been no effort 
to shut down the marijuana clubs, other than the three accused of 
drug trafficking.

Still, club owners, who distance themselves from the raided clubs, 
are wary. Local Drug Enforcement Administration officials insisted 
after the recent arrests that they will not target sick people who 
use marijuana. But they offered no such guarantee to the places that 
sell the drug, and club owners cannot be sure that their locations 
will not be targeted next.

"Every day you realize law enforcement could take action," said 
Justmann, 60, who runs a downtown club and uses marijuana to 
alleviate side effects of HIV drugs.

Ross Mirkarimi, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors 
who has led the push for regulation, said the city's willingness to 
"turn a blind eye" led to the boom in marijuana clubs that now 
threatens to cause a backlash.

Some of the newest clubs opened after other California cities -- 
notably neighboring Oakland -- laid down their own restrictions. In 
San Francisco, though, pot clubs still face fewer guidelines than 
most businesses.

Mirkarimi, who is calling for annual licensing and limits on where 
pot clubs can operate and how much profit they can earn, said the 
clubs "should be catapulted into the mainstream. . . . The more 
cognizant we are of our medical-marijuana clubs, the less likely it 
will be for the DEA to threaten a raid."

Some advocates have expressed concern that greater regulation would 
force clubs to compile paper trails that could put them and patients 
at risk if federal investigators come around. Others are leery of 
measures that would limit the number of clubs.

"Then you have lines outside, and big operations and economies of 
scale where they become kind of corporate," said Hilary McQuie of the 
advocacy group Americans for Safe Access, which supports many other 
regulation proposals. "I'd rather support a bunch of proverbial mom-and-pops."

Yet overall, club operators say they welcome new rules. Beck said the 
city should require that club owners be physician-referred cannabis 
patients themselves -- not only because they are the only possessors 
protected by state law, but also because of their ability to 
empathize with their customers' medical conditions.

Patients, meanwhile, "will know the quality of cannabis has been 
checked," he said.

Justmann agreed. "The more facilities there are, you know the 
cannabis supplies are watered down."
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake