The Buzz On San Francisco's Cannabis Cultivators Club. By Jim Nintzel SAN FRANCISCO'S NOTORIOUS Cannabis Cultivators Club has reopened and, up on the third floor, everyone is in high spirits. Here, in a cavernous room with scattered tables, chairs and couches, club members feel free to light up and "self-medicate" themselves in a quasi-legal--if somewhat pungent--atmosphere. "This is the first legal sale of marijuana in 60 years," says club founder Dennis Peron, who occasionally interrupts an interview to answer a phone call or take a hit off a joint. Although he's only been back in business for three days, Peron already has more than 1,500 applicants. Add to that the endless parade of media--from CNN to the tiny Tucson Weekly--and you can understand why Peron seems a tad manic at times. Located in a nondescript storefront on the city's bustling Market Street, the Cannabis Cultivators Club is a flashpoint in the nation's latest debate on drugs. Last November, voters in California and Arizona passed initiatives which allow the use of pot for medicinal purposes. The legislation sparked a firestorm in Washington, with the White House promising to deal harshly with physicians who prescribe pot for their patients and Congress rushing into hearings on the impact of the new laws. But even as the politicians--or, as Peron calls them, "backstabbing, conniving hacks"--push a tough-on-drugs strategy, another question has begun to emerge: What are the positive benefits of marijuana as medicine? Convinced of the herb's ability to ease the suffering of sick people, Peron isn't waiting for results from federal studies. His Cannabis Club members can choose between different strains of marijuana, from inexpensive Mexican pot to the more pricey Californian bud (available in grades A through the stupefying AAAA, affectionately dubbed "quad" by club insiders). Or, if smoking's not your thing, you can belly up to the bar and talk to the heavy-set Gypsy, who peddles Hansen's smoothies and pot-laced truffles and brownies. "We're just like any other group, except we're all sick and dying," explains Gypsy, who says he's afflicted with liver cancer, which he attributes to a dose of Agent Orange the U.S. government intentionally dumped on him in Vietnam. Gypsy doesn't have much trust for the government--for example, he believes NASA has covered up film footage of astronauts walking through ruined cities on the moon. A distrust of government in general and law enforcement in particular is one thing club members seem to have in common. Passing their pipes around tables to the beat of Carlos Santana, they talk about getting beat up by narcs, busted by the cops and generally screwed by the government. Other than their dislike for police, though, club members are, not surprisingly, a mellow bunch who praise the club's comfortable vibe. "It can be pretty lonely if you have AIDS in America," Peron says. "I just signed up a couple of people who don't do any pot, but they have AIDS and they don't have anywhere to go and they think of this as their club. They just want a place to hang out." The inspiration to open the club came to Peron after he lost his lover to AIDS in 1990. He began offering a "membership" to anybody who had a medical condition alleviated by the use of pot. "At first it was totally low profile," Peron says. "I didn't tell anybody. Then we moved to the bigger place and it got so damn big you couldn't hide it anymore. (In 1993) I came out on the front page of the (San Francisco) Examiner and told my story about the pharmacy I'm running on Church and Market. The cops got mad and tried to bust me, but I had such public support they couldn't. It created this furor, but it also created a bigger club. People started flocking to me." At its height, the Cannabis Buyers Club had about 12,000 members. California Attorney General Dan Lungren, however, didn't share the San Francisco politicians' tolerant attitude and, last August, he ordered state troopers to raid the club and seize its records. "Dan Lungren thought he could make a political stand," says Peron, who has a court date at the end of February to answer civil and criminal charges related to the bust. "He said, 'Hey I'll kill two birds with one stone--I'll close the Cannabis Buyers Club and defeat Prop 215 and hang it on the neck of Dennis Peron.' That was his big plan. He thought he was going to portray me as the devil, but the media didn't see me that way. They saw me as someone who took his liberty and put it on the line to try to get medicine for sick people, which is who I am. I guess Dan didn't know that and it backfired on him." After voters passed the California initiative in November, Peron went before a state judge who said the club could re-open. Last week, Peron was back in business, with a few cosmetic changes. Members now carry picture IDs, for example, and the club has changed its name from the Cannabis Buyers Club to the Cannabis Cultivators Club. While the proposition's passage has given him a measure of protection from California law enforcement agencies, federal law still prohibits sale and possession of pot. The Clinton Administration has threatened to prosecute physicians who prescribe marijuana, but Peron is optimistic the feds will leave his operation alone. "I'm not worried about them," he says. "Essentially, what we've got is a bunch of sick and dying people who have tiny amounts of marijuana. If they want to come, they can come and bust us and take us to court." For now, however, it seems the debate will remain centered in San Francisco. Peron says no one from Arizona has contacted him about starting a similar operation in our state. "But I'd love to hear from someone," he says.

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