San Francisco Chronicle; Wednesday, December 17, 1997 - Page A3
Scott Ostler

Terminal cancer, AIDS, chronic and debilitating pain and depression. It's all lined up on the sidewalk, waiting for the 5 p.m. opening of the Cannabis Buyers Club.

These folks will show their club photo IDs to the burly doorman, go upstairs, pay a fair price for weed that hasn't been dragged through the gutter, and zonk away their pains and miseries.

If these are sharpies hitting on a good scam, they must be related to those lucky slobs who get to use the really good blue- sign parking spaces.

I paid a nonsmoking visit to the CBC this week, because it's a bit of San Francisco history and it might not be around much longer.

Dan Lungren, the state attorney general, ordered the CBC to shut down in 30 days (25 now) or he'll send in the cops to do the job.

Even though 56 percent of the voters passed Prop. 215, yes on medicinal marijuana, a state appeals court Friday said wait a minute. If your doctor says you need marijuana, you can smoke it, fine. But nobody can sell it to you, especially not the CBC.

If the court and Lungren get their way, the sick will have to grow their own weed out on the North 40, or buy it on the corner from the two-legged drugstore.

Let's hope nobody asks that same court to rule on vegetables. Pssst, hey buddy. The cops just shut down Safeway. Wanna buy some primo Mexican yams?

No way Peron will close his own club, and a forced closing would not be pretty. Weed tends not to make a person belligerent or crazed, and a lot of these people look like they barely have the strength to brush their teeth.

But they are kind of upset.

"I'm gonna handcuff myself to those rails," says Leon Mortensen, a Vietnam War POW with stomach cancer and a bullet lodged near his spine. "If they want to chop my hands off, that's up to them."

Joe Kolaski has HIV and says the pot allows him to take his medicine without barfing. "I'll march with Dennis," he says. "I'll be here. They'll throw me in jail."

I ask Larry Blumhoff if he'll resist a closing, and he says grimly, "I'll do everything in my power." He has no legs.

It might not come to that scene. Peron will appeal the ruling. Willie Brown is a solid Prop. 215 supporter, and his sense of justice for the underdog is so keen he went all the way to Oakland to defend a basketball player. San Francisco's leftish DA, Terence Hallinan, has a very low opinion of the recent court ruling.

Also, you have to wonder how much appetite our cops would have for dragging blind people and guys with no legs out of a clean, quiet pot club when the sidewalks outside are a crazed, violent carnival of crack and speed and alcohol abuse.

Dr. Pot is fairly solid on his stance.

"If we don't stop 'em this time," Peron says, "democracy is over."

I'm guessing that some people view the club as evil because on TV news shows it looks like a pot party. The four floors of the club are gaily painted and decorated. The smokers are shown smiling and chatting. Maybe it would help if Peron painted the place black and banned laughing and talking.

"Yeah," the club founder says. "There's a lot of `You don't look sick enough.' "

He's right. The only pall I noticed, aside from the quiet suffering behind the smiles, was the ticking of Lungren's clock.

Fourteen-forty-four Market Street is medicinal pot's Alamo. And as the Beastie Boys once sang, "You gotta fight for your right to par-ty."
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