Court Clears Way for Closure of Marijuana Clubs

SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court cleared the way Wednesday for state officials to close medical marijuana clubs, deciding not to review a lower court decision that the 1996 medical marijuana initiative provided no protection for the clubs.

The lower court had ruled in December that Proposition 215, passed by voters in the November 1996 election, only protected a person’s right to use marijuana for medical purposes and did not provide any right to sell the drug. The initiative also did not allow a commercial enterprise to furnish marijuana as a primary caregiver, the lower court had ruled.

State officials had delayed on moving against the clubs until the Supreme Court could decide whether to review the lower court ruling. But the justices unanimously, and without comment, declined to hear the case.

Dennis Peron, author of Proposition 215 and founder of the San Francisco enterprise now called the Cannabis Cultivators Club, insisted Wednesday that the club was no longer selling marijuana but was merely being reimbursed for cultivation costs and was in compliance with the ruling.

The state’s lawyer in the case said, however, that he would ask a San Francisco judge Thursday to order Peron’s club closed, and expected closure of all such operations in California as a result of the ruling.

“Voters did not intend to allow commercial enterprises to sell narcotics, like Mr. Peron’s doing,” said John Gordnier, a senior assistant attorney general.

Federal prosecutors have also asked a federal judge to shut down Peron’s club and five others, saying that they are violating federal law against the possession and sale of marijuana, regardless of Proposition 215.

Proposition 215 allows possession and cultivation of marijuana upon a doctor’s recommendation to ease the pain and nausea of AIDS, cancer, glaucoma and other conditions.

Peron’s club, then called the Cannabis Buyers’ Club, had been raided three months before the election by state officials, who said marijuana was being sold to people without doctors’ prescriptions. In January 1997, a trial court judge had ordered the state to allow the club to reopen, saying that Proposition 215 allowed a nonprofit organization to sell marijuana to patients who had named the club as their primary caregiver.

But the appeals court overruled that decision in December, ruling that “the intent of the initiative was to allow persons to cultivate and possess a sufficient amount of marijuana for their own approved medical purposes.”

A primary caregiver--defined by the initiative as an individual, designated by the patient, “who has consistently assumed responsibility for the housing, health, or safety of that person”--cannot be a commercial enterprise like the Cannabis Buyers’ Club, the appeals court had ruled.