San Francisco Chronicle - The Voice of the West, 901 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94119 - Friday, August 9, 1996 - Page A1
Glen Martin, Charles Burress, Maria Alicia Gaura, Chronicle Staff Writers

"We've been flooded since the San Francisco bust," said a harried Jeff Jones, co-director of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Club, as he helped screen the influx of applicants at the club's month-old outlet in downtown Oakland last night.

"Oh boy, our phones just rang all day long," Fred Seike, manager of the Cannabis Buyers Club in Santa Cruz, said yesterday. "We got dozens of calls from folks from San Francisco, and we're doing our best to help out."

Before it was busted by state narcotics agents, San Francisco's Cannabis Buyers' Club at 1444 Market St. provided 12,000 clients with marijuana to alleviate symptoms associated with AIDS, cancer and glaucoma.

A court order forced the club to close Monday.

"Before the raid, we were signing up about five new members a day," said Liana Held, the other co- director of the Oakland club, which is not directly affiliated with the San Francisco club.

"Now, we're signing up about 20 new members a day, and we're fielding about 100 calls a day," said Held, whose cluttered desk last night still held the lunchtime sandwich she had been too busy to eat. About 40 small marijuana plants sat growing under a makeshift fluorescent-lit aluminum-foil tent next to the desk.

The club, born two years ago as medical marijuana home-delivery service, has operated a sales outlet for only a month. It sits hidden in a well-worn office suite on the sixth floor of a partially empty office building in downtown Oakland. The address is not publicized because club operators screen potential members by phone first.

At 6 p.m. last night, about a dozen club members and applicants waited to fill out sheaves of forms and take their turn in front of the display case holding baggies of buds, marijuana cookies at $3 each, tincture of THC, marijuana pudding and a dozen different books about marijuana. A quarter gram of buds ranged from $12 to $130.

A large Indian-print bedspread drapes one wall, and a table holds support-group pamphlets and a basket of condoms.

"This place is not like San Francisco," said Marty Meeks, who smokes pot to ease the effects of HIV treatment and was one of several refugees there from the San Francisco club. "It's like a pot party there, but here it's like a place to get prescriptions."

Held, in the middle of negotiating by phone to get white lab coats for her staff, said she is not worried about being busted. "We have different procedures, and we're strict about screening. There is no smoking here, and we have to see a doctor's order, the original with the signature." She also pointed to the Oakland City Council's March 12 resolution supporting the club's activities.

As of 5 p.m. yesterday, membership had risen to 275 from the 215 members before the bust, Held said. "We'll probably hit 300 by the end of the day."

One newcomer, Tim Ackerley, came by train from Evanston, Ill., with a prescription he obtained from a Rotterdam doctor for nerve pain caused by an Amtrak accident in February. He was buying $200 worth of tincture to take back to relieve pain he described as "like my back and head are being beaten with a club."

"We're really stretched," Held said. "We don't have a fax or copy machine, and our computer is old, so it's really raising havoc with our records and communications. We're also having a hard time servicing clients because our supplies of marijuana are getting depleted." Held said she has been working 12-hour days since the San Francisco raid.

Held said she has had to turn some San Francisco residents away because their medical prescriptions and documents were inadequate. "We run a very tight operation here," she said.

The San Francisco club was cited by state prosecutors as a free- for-all operation run for profit. State agents claimed pot was sold without medical prescriptions and smoked in front of children, exposing them to secondhand fumes.

By most accounts, there are between seven and 10 medical marijuana clubs statewide, and possibly as many as 20 more clubs nationwide. Most have tried to keep a low profile -- an increasingly difficult proposition since the San Francisco raid.

NO TROUBLE IN SANTA CRUZ

"We have been very rigorous about our standards, and so far we haven't received any trouble from city agencies," Seike said of the Santa Cruz operation, which serves about 200 clients locally. "In fact, the Santa Cruz City Council and Police Department and the county Sheriff's Department have issued statements supporting the use of medical marijuana.

Housed in a cheery yellow Victorian house only blocks from the police station, the Santa Cruz club is open three days a week. On a normal morning, club regulars walk or steer their wheelchairs up a ramp twined with blue flowering vines and wait their turn at a discreetly hidden side door.

But Seike said his group also has been strained by an influx of San Francisco residents seeking pot. The club maintains a co-membership policy with the San Francisco club, and Santa Cruz members have agreed to voluntary limits on the amount of marijuana that they buy, with any extra going to people from San Francisco, Seike said.

"Some of them (San Francisco club members) are pretty desperate, especially those suffering from tremors due to their illnesses," he said.

Meanwhile, the sudden closure of the San Francisco club also appears to have driven up the price of marijuana in the city. A San Francisco law enforcement agent said the cost of street pot has gone up about 300 percent since Sunday's raid.

NEW SUPPORT FOR PROP. 215

On a related front, support is picking up for Proposition 215, a marijuana decriminalization initiative on the November ballot.

Medical marijuana advocates announced yesterday that the San Francisco Medical Society -- representing 1,900 San Francisco physicians -- has endorsed the initiative.

Steve Heilig, spokesman for the society, said the 9,000-member California Academy of Family Physicians also has announced its support of Proposition 215.
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