vis1025-peron1

January 8, 10:25 PM

Democracy Still Works:

S.F. Cannabis Club Restraining Order Lifted

Dennis Peron: your friend in the war for marijuana rights

words by Eva Way
photo by Donna Compton

While Bill Clinton, Barry McCaffrey, Janet Reno and their peers condemn the California and Arizona Medical Marijuana laws (recently passed by democratic electoral mandates), ridiculing patients and intimidating doctors, something great happened in California yesterday.

Judge Garcia ruled that the San Francisco Cannabis Club can reopen and operate. The Cannabis Club was the FIRST one ever . . . the biggest one ever… the most high profile… and it was closed last August by Gestapo troops under the direct control of State Attorney General Dan Lundgren. It stayed closed by court order until yesterday.

Judge David A. Garcia ruled yesterday (January 8, 1997) in favor of caregiver Dennis Peron and San Francisco's medical Cannabis Club. The judge's restraining order against Peron and the Club stood for five months following a raid of the Club on August 4, 1996 by state narcotics agents. Today that injunction against Peron and the Club was lifted based on what Judge Garcia called "the will of the people," as shown by 56% of California voters passing the Compassionate Use Act (Proposition 215) on November 5, 1996.

Judge Garcia's current ruling means that the Club will reopen on January 15th as a cannabis cultivators club (for registration only Ð no medicinal marijuana will be available until the following week).

Each patient who qualifies to receive medicinal marijuana should bring by a letter of diagnosis from his or her physician. The Club staff will be making phone calls to verify the diagnosis with the physician. No records will be stored at the Club and patients will be issued a card (with photo) identifying them as a Club members and medical marijuana users. Marijuana will be cultivated and distributed at the Club with a fee charged to members to cover the costs of production.

"This is the first time that a ruling permitting the cultivation of marijuana for medical patients has ever been handed down by a judicial officer," said J. David Nick, counsel for Peron and the Cannabis Club.

"This is the first time in this lengthy legal process that the patients have been considered first," said attorney Wade Francois, co-counsel specializing in medical issues.

"This is our second step in a thousand mile journey towards a more compassionate society," said Club founder Dennis Peron. "Democracy still works."

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What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country . .

-- Robert F. Kennedy, 1968

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Text of the Ruling by Judge David A. Garcia 1/8/97:

"Preliminary injunction is modified to permit defendants to possess and cultivate medicinal marijuana for personal medical purposes of patients who have designated defendant as their primary care giver upon the written or oral recommendation on approval of patient's doctor which recommendation or approval has been communicated to defendant by the patient's doctor."