Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1996. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The Associated Press - 8 August 1996
Mike Hennessey said he hoped that Attorney General Dan Lungren "would understand that our community does not wish to spend precious law enforcement dollars busting people engaged in distributing marijuana for medical purposes."
The Cannabis Buyers' Club, which had operated openly for five years without interference from city officials or police, was raided Sunday by Lungren's Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement.
State agents, who gave no advance notice to the local District Attorney's office about the raid, said they seized 150 pounds of marijuana, $60,000 in cash and about 11,000 records of pot-smoking clients.
Hennessey said Lungren should bring any violations of the court order to the judge's attention himself. A spokesman for Lungren said it appeared the club was obeying the ban, so the attorney general's office would not push Hennessey to enforce the order.
On Thursday, the club's doors were locked and there were no signs of any activity.
Lungren said the club was a conduit for dealers who sold Buyers' Club brand marijuana on the street. He said the club, which claimed to require doctors' letters certifying buyers' serious medical conditions, actually accepted notes on napkins or scrap paper and complaints of ailments as minor as lower-back pains. He also said minors were sold marijuana.
The club says its members suffer from AIDS, cancer, glaucoma and other conditions for which marijuana is said to ease the pain of the disease or the side effects of treatment.
No criminal charges have been filed. But Judge William Cahill granted Lungren a temporary restraining order Monday forbidding marijuana sales at the club. Lungren's office sent a letter Tuesday to Hennessey asking for enforcement, drawing a harsh reply from the sheriff, a Democrat elected to the nonpartisan office.
"If the attorney general wishes to assist local law enforcement, why not assist in arresting the tens of thousands of state parolees who have outstanding arrest warrants?" Hennessey wrote Lungren, a Republican, on Wednesday. "Why not assign Department of Justice personnel to help solve the thousands of unsolved murders and armed robberies in the state?"
He noted that the ban on medicinal marijuana would be repealed by Proposition 215, a November ballot initiative whose statewide campaign headquarters are at the club.
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