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Drug War Prison Bonanza (An analysis of the war on some drug users, in the
Bellingham, Washington, Every Other Weekly, notes the battle fought in the
name of the children has left one of every nine American school-age children
with one or both parents in jail, a figure soon expected to increase to one
of every four children.)

Date: Sun, 03 May 1998 10:58:14 -0700
From: Kevin Nelson (kcnelson@premier1.net)
Reply-To: kcnelson@premier1.net
To: hemp-talk@hemp.net
Subject: HT: Drug War Prison Bonanza
Sender: owner-hemp-talk@hemp.net
Printed in the Every Other Weekly
Bellingham, WA
Circulation ~30,000
May 1, 1998

Drug War Prison Bonanza
					
Before his arrest, Will Foster was an ordinary man. A self-employed
Oklahoma computer analyst, taxpayer, father of three, and Army retiree,
Will was an asset to his community who'd never had a run-in with the law
in his 39 years. But Will was technically a criminal. An anonymous tip
led police to raid his home, and in the process discover a basement
marijuana garden that Will raised to generate a supply of medicine for
his crippling rheumatoid arthritis.

After his arrest, Will became one of the few people in his county to
reject a guilty plea for his offense and opt instead for a jury trial.
From that moment on the police seemed to want to make an example out of
him. Despite a number of Constitutional rights violations during his
trial the jury succumbed to the intense pressure of the prosecution and
sentenced Will Foster to 93 years in prison for his first offense.

Will's case is by no means unique. Since the massive upscaling of the
War on Drugs under the Reagan and Bush administrations, America has
placed tremendous emphasis upon trying to arrest its way out of the drug
problem. Reaching fever pitch under the Clinton administration, this
focus on wanton imprisonment of drug users has led to a host of horrific
statistics:

* America has the highest rate of incarceration of its citizens of any
nation in the world. There are currently 1.7 million Americans behind
bars.

* One in every three African-American men is in jail or on some form of
supervised release. That's four times higher than the rate of
incarceration for African men of color during the height of apartheid
in South Africa.

* One in every nine American school-age children has one or both parents
in jail. This figure is soon anticipated to reach down to one in every
four children.

* In 1995, California, for the first time, appropriated more money for
its corrections institutions than for its educational system.

* According to the Bureau of Prisons' statistics, over 60% of federal
prisoners are in for "drug offenses," 2.8% are in for "violent
offenses," and 0.7% are incarcerated for "white collar crimes."

* The average sentence for a first-time non-violent drug offense is
longer than the average sentence for rape, child molestation,
manslaughter, or bank robbery. Since many non-violent drug offenses
receive mandatory "no parole" sentences, the problem of overcrowded
prisons is increasingly diffused by releasing violent criminals back
into American communities.

* Over 11 million Americans have been arrested since 1965 for
marijuana-related offenses. A record 642,000 arrests occurred in 1996
alone, with 85% of those for simple possession. That's one arrest every
49 seconds.

Drug war 1998

The past two years have seen some desperate scrambling as the first
foundational cracks have begun to appear in the façade of America's War
on Drugs. What once was considered heretical or extremist has now
become acceptable- the discussion of alternatives to a one-size-fits-all
policy of absolute prohibition. But as more people begin to consider
and discuss drug addiction as a medical rather than a criminal issue,
new legislation is coming down the pipeline designed to further upscale
the war.

In January 1998, Representative Bobby Moak (R-MS) proposed House Bill
192 dubbed "Smoke a Joint, Lose a Limb." Section One states: "In lieu
of any other penalty prescribed by law, the court may allow any person
who is convicted for a violation of the Controlled Substances Law to
have a body part removed. The convicted person and the court must agree
on which body part shall be removed."

In Kansas, a coalition of 38 Republican state legislators has proposed
that growing marijuana should be punishable by life without parole.
First degree murderers in Kansas are eligible for parole after 25 years.

Newt Gingrich, who in 1982 wrote an impassioned letter to the Journal of
the American Medical Association in defense of legal access to medical
marijuana, has twice in the past year proposed The Drug Importer Death
Penalty Act (HR 41) as his most impressive gambit for punishing drug
kingpins. Operationally, however, anyone caught crossing the border
with a personal possession amount of two ounces of marijuana would be
subject to either life in prison without chance of parole or the death
penalty.

California

Since the passage of Proposition 215 in California, which renewed pubic
debate for the recognition of marijuana as medicine, the issues and
definitions of drug abuse and drug policy have started to be
reevaluated. Many politicians have claimed that medical access to
marijuana is being used as a wedge issue to initiate the onset of drug
legalization.

Members of the anti-prohibitionist movement have indeed claimed that
marijuana is the cornerstone of the War on Drugs. Removing America's
most popular illicit substance from the realm of illegality would
certainly make it harder to justify a $17 billion annual Drug War
budget.

Without marijuana smokers to pursue, the "enemy" pool would be reduced
to 2 million hard-core heroin and cocaine addicts, many struggling in
abject poverty. The drug war would potentially be seen as a race war,
operating without a clue as to the mechanics of addiction. The domestic
paramilitary approach would inevitably give way to maintenance programs
and community outreach. For the War on Drugs to remain a viable policy
for the many key players profiting immensely from prohibition, marijuana
must therefore remain illegal.

States' rights showdown

As the federal government continues to apply pressure to close the
Cannabis Buyer's Clubs in California, city and state officials there
have responded with equal pressure to back off. On March 16, 1998, in a
dramatic showdown, Mayor Willie Brown and District Attorney Terence
Hallinan of San Francisco went public with a plan to have local police
distribute marijuana to seriously ill patients should the local buyer's
clubs be forced to close. State Attorney General Dan Lungren
counter-threatened to prosecute city officials engaged in breaking
federally established marijuana laws.

The tension forming could yield insights into the hierarchy of power in
America. After years of leading the charge to de-evolve federal power
to the states, the Republican-led Congress is balking on the medical
marijuana issue and have cast themselves in the "big government" role
they'd railed against while in the minority party. The vision of
filling scarce prison space with hordes of elderly, critically ill, and
wheelchair-bound citizens, along with consenting doctors, and now local
city officials, though distasteful in itself, has not slowed down the
charge coming out of Washington, D.C.

China Blues

Once in prison, the value of life drops off dramatically. The trend in
American correctional institutions in the past twenty years has shifted
emphasis away from rehabilitation and education to efficient,
inexpensive warehousing of bodies. America's prison population, now
largely composed of non-violent drug offenders, is increasingly viewed
as an exploitable resource for entrepreneurial benefit. Prison labor,
though condemned as regards China, is alive and well in America. In
many parts of the U.S., prison building and prison labor are the chief
growth industries, giving rise to prison industry journals that publish
glowing projections of a continued increase in the population of
incarcerated American citizens.

On a more grisly note, under a bill filed in the Missouri State
legislature, inmates on death row may soon be given the option of having
their sentence commuted to life without parole in exchange for a
healthy, transplantable internal organ. Chinese prisons have a long
record of utilizing death row prisoners as involuntary organ "donors."
The Chinese prisoner, however, is then executed and the organ is sold to
the highest bidder.

As with many Drug War-inspired laws, the Missouri bill could soon lead
to spin-off interpretations where prisoners will simply "owe" society
their healthy organs prior to their execution.

Gladiator Fights

As the prison industry continues to expand at unprecedented rates, the
reports of abuses have similarly grown. On February 26, 1998, eight
Corcoran State Prison guards in California were indicted by the FBI for
staging "gladiator fights" among inmates for entertainment, then
shooting one or more of them to death when they failed to stop fighting
on command. One of the guards referred to the practice as "duck hunting
season."

According to an FBI official, the indictments came "despite intentional
efforts on the part of corrections officials to stymie, delay and
obstruct our inquiry."

Forty prisoners have been shot in similar circumstances in the past ten
years at the facility. Attorney General Dan Lungren conducted a
ten-month investigation of the reported violence at Corcoran and filed
no criminal charges. The Department of Corrections similarly
investigated but found no evidence of wrongdoing, opting instead to
defend the actions of the guards.

Forfeiture

Another offspring of the drug war is the rise in civil forfeiture laws.
Initially conceived as a monetary enticement for local police
departments to place increased emphasis on upholding drug laws, civil
forfeiture has since expanded by leaps and bounds. By allowing law
enforcement to seize the homes, vehicles, cash and other belongings of
even 'suspected' drug offenders, then pocket the proceedings, civil
forfeiture encourages a corrupting influence throughout many of our
nation's police departments.

US Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL) has come out strongly against this
drug war tactic. According to Hyde, "Civil asset forfeiture laws are
being used in terribly unjust ways, are depriving innocent victims of
their property, with nothing that can be called due process. ...You never
have to be convicted of any crime to lose your property. You never have
to be charged with any crime. In fact, even if you are acquitted by a
jury on criminal charges, your property can be seized."

Since 1985, the federal government through the Departments of Justice
and Treasury has seized over $4 billion in cash and property from US
citizens under forfeiture laws. In over 80% of these cases, the person
owning the property was never charged with a crime.

Conclusion

It is difficult to conceive what it will take for the American public to
insist upon a broad reevaluation of the drug policies that have
accelerated our current social predicament. Monetary arguments
comparing the 7:1 savings associated with treating drug addiction as a
medical "disease" versus a moral "crime" get very little media
attention. Though many areas of the country are being forced to reroute
money earmarked for schools to pay for the increasing costs of
imprisonment, it may take the bankrupting of local economies to elicit
enough moral outrage to sponsor change. And while many European
countries, as well as Australia and New Zealand, have had tremendous
success with inexpensive "harm reduction" policies in approaching drug
issues, there is a virtual media blackout regarding any meaningful
discussion of these alternatives.

As with any war the "enemy" must be demonized through propaganda to
allow for its elimination by any means necessary. "Drugs," "addicts,"
and "dealers" are terms now charged to elicit a response far removed
from their original meaning. Though the War on Drugs has yet to
accomplish any of its avowed aims, the battle is seen as an end unto
itself. According to Dr. Thomas Szasz of the Dept. of Psychology at
Syracuse University, the drug warrior's victory is never in question
because "Since he wages war on evil, his very effort is synonymous with
success."

As long as the American public can be kept from personally identifying
with the millions of people arrested, bankrupted, imprisoned, orphaned,
and killed by the War on Drugs, the devastation will continue unabated.
And, according to those orchestrating current American drug policy, in
language reminiscent of the Vietnam War, the light at the end of the
tunnel will (forever) be just around the corner.

Kevin Nelson is a freelance writer living in Bow, WA

For more information on how to get involved in drug war issues, check
out The November Coalition at www.november.org, Families Against
Mandatory Minimums at www.famm.org, and the Media Awareness Project at
www.mapinc.org/ For daily drug war updates, check out
www.marijuananews.com

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Prop. 215 Delays Marijuana Trial (The Modesto Bee says the marijuana
cultivation trial of Robert Galambos in San Andreas, California, was put on
hold Wednesday so defense attorney Tony Serra could appeal Judge John
Martin's ruling that Galambos's cultivation of more than 300 cannabis plants
couldn't be defended even under California's "Defense Of Necessity"
statutes.)

Date: Tue, 05 May 1998 01:17:27 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: Melodi Cornett (mrhorse@kih.net)
Subject: MN: US CA: Prop. 215 Delays Marijuana Trial
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: compassion23@geocities.com
Pubdate: Fri, 01 May 1998
Source: Modesto Bee (CA)
Contact: http://www.modbee.com/man/help/contact.html
Website: http://www.modbee.com/
Author: Ron DeLacy

PROP. 215 DELAYS MARIJUANA TRIAL

SAN ANDREAS -- A marijuana-cultivation trial was delayed by at least a week
and maybe for several months Wednesday over issues related to Proposition
215, the medical-marijuana law, and a common-law concept of "a defense of
necessity."

Robert Galambos, arrested in a raid last summer when officers said they
found him tending a garden with more than 300 pot plants, is charged with
felony cultivation. He claims he has a doctor's permission to use marijuana
but that most of his plantation was intended for use at Bay Area cannabis
clubs that sell to patients who can't grow it themselves.

Judge John Martin made several pretrial rulings Wednesday, and two of them
limited the Proposition 215 defense and disallowed the necessity defense.
But he agreed to a continuance to allow Tony Serra, Galambos' San Francisco
attorney, to challenge the rulings in a writ to the state Court of Appeal in
Sacramento.

In a press conference two weeks ago, Serra said the necessity defense was a
principle that could apply to medical marijuana users even without regard to
Proposition 215.

It is the concept that a crime should be excused if it was done to avoid a
greater evil. Example: Trespassing into a private lake to save a child from
drowning.

Serra said Galambos had an "oral contract" with the cannabis clubs, and that
it was later put into writing. A prewritten contract obviously would be
easier to sell to a jury under Proposition 215, but a necessity defense
could argue that if cancer or AIDS patients were going to get the marijuana,
then alleviating their suffering avoids a greater evil than the crime of
growing pot.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

New Marijuana Club Allowed To Operate (An Associated Press item in the Los
Angeles Times notes Superior Court Judge William Cahill on Wednesday
scheduled a June 4 hearing to determine if any drug laws are being broken at
San Francisco's new Cannabis Healing Center.)

Date: Fri, 01 May 1998 19:30:13 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: Mike Gogulski 
Subject: MN: US CA: New Marijuana Club Allowed To Operate
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Jim Rosenfield
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Pubdate: 1 May 1998
Author: Associated Press

NEW MARIJUANA CLUB ALLOWED TO OPERATE

SAN FRANCISCO--A judge has refused to order the immediate shutdown of a
medical marijuana club that opened a day after the Cannabis Cultivators
Club, on the same site, was closed by court order. Superior Court Judge
William Cahill instead told the new Cannabis Healing Center this week to
curb drug sales within 150 feet of its premises. He set a June 4 hearing to
determine if drug laws are being broken inside the club.

The Cannabis Cultivators Club supplied marijuana to about 9,000 patients
and was run by Dennis Peron, author of Proposition 215, the ballot
initiative that allowed patients to use marijuana for side effects of
cancer therapy, AIDS and other illnesses with a doctor's recommendation.

A state appeals court ruled last year that the club, which served patients
coming off the street, was not a "primary caregiver" authorized by
Proposition 215. State Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren went to court for a shutdown
order, but Peron contended that he was serving only patients for whom the
club provided continuing care. Superior Court Judge David Garcia
sidestepped the dispute and instead ordered the club closed based on
Peron's admission that it sold marijuana not only to patients but also to
caregivers of bedridden patients.

The club closed April 20. The next day, the Cannabis Healing Center opened
in the same storefront, under the direction of Hazel Rodgers, 79, who uses
marijuana for glaucoma.

Copyright Los Angeles Times

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Dan Lungren vs. the Peter Pan of Pot (The Express, in Berkeley, California,
recounts the Dennis Peron saga.)

Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 21:10:38 EDT
Originator: drctalk@drcnet.org
Sender: drctalk@drcnet.org
From: Gerald Sutliff (gsutliff@dnai.com)
To: Multiple recipients of list (drctalk@drcnet.org)
Subject: The Peter Pan of Pot
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
E-mail: Ebxpress@aol.com

Dear Talkers,

The following article is published in the East Bay Express, a free newspaper.
I know it is long but it is also entertaining and informative.

Enjoy.

The Express may be e-mailed at Ebexpress@aol.com
vty, jerry sutliff

***

The Pot Club Is Dead! Long Live the Pot Club!," the San Francisco Examiner
ex-claimed with neo-Hearstian flamboyance. It was April 21, the day before
Cannabis Cultivators Club founder Dennis Peron was to preside over the
opening of the newly reinvented Cannabis Healing Center.

This slight-of-hand maneuver fooled no one, of course. From the national
evening news to front-page coverage throughout the Bay Area and the
&ountry, you couldn't miss the news that on April 15 San Francisco Superior
Court Judge David Garcia ordered Peron's club shut down, ruling that the
majordomo of the medical marijuana movement broke the verv law he wrote-the
state law passed as Proposition 215 in 1996. That law, ruled Judge
Garcia, authorized marijuana sales only to doctor-approved patients not
said tne judge, to their "caregivers."

The civil suit was brought by Dan Lungren, the Republican state attorney
general against whom Peron is running for the GOP governors nomination in
the June 2 pnmary San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey was the reluctant
official charged with evicting Peron from his Market Street premises. No
sooner had the eviction happened than the building found a new tenant: the
new Cannabis Healing Center is now run by a perky se~ tuagenarian
grandmother named Hazel Rogers who has used pot for years to counter the
pain of her glaucoma.

Though Peron is now officially the ex-head of the controversial pot club,
he is not yet able to retire from the public scene. He faces another
Lungren-inspired legal ac-tion: a criminal case which will take place this
month in the Alameda County Court-house. If convicted on Lungren's criminal
charges of felonious possession of mari-juana with intent to sell, Peron
could face a dozen years of hard time.

When he decided to get involved with politics, Peron says, he never thought
he'd be facing a heavy prison term, but the 52-year-old activist has been a
much-celebrated gadfly in the legal ointment for many years, ever since he
returned from his Air Force stint in Vietnam and settled in San Francisco's
Haight-Ashbury in 1970. Both places, he maintains, profound-ly affected
him: the horrors of Vietnam turned him into a crusader for peace who took a
lifelong vow of poverty; the anar-chic atmosphere of the Haight and the
free spirit of the newly emerging gay mecca in the Castro district set the
pace for a brand new life. Inspired by his friendship with San Francisco
Supervisor Harvey Milk, he became a gay rights activist, and as an
outspoken advocate of legalized marijua-na, he began openly selling pot-so
openly that he's been busted for it sixteen times over the years, including
one bust during which he was shot by an under-cover cop.

Two later police raids were even more instrumental in Peron's activist
career. It was after one bust in 1990 at the home he shared with his lover
who was slowly dy-ing of AIDS that Peron decided to become a full4ime
crusader: he started the Canna-bis Cultivators Club to provide access to
marijuana for medicinal purposes to sick and dying AIDS patients. He
subsequenfly engineered passage of a city ordinance that was the precursor
to Prop. 215, the medical marijuana initiative that was established as
California law by a sizable 56 percent statewide majority in 199~but not
be-fore his archnemesis Dan Lungren tried his best to derail him.

In late October 1996, just three weeks before the 'election, Peron was
arrested in a raid by agents of the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement
assigned to Attorney General Dan Lungren. This was the second
Lungren~ordered bust in the three months prior to the election, leading
Per-on to conclude that Lungren was inten-tionally abusing his power as a
political ploy to discredit Prop. 215 and vilify its au-thor. So Peron
decided he would run against Lungren for the ~publican guber-natorial
nomination.

Now, a year and a half later, the two-ring David-vs.-Goliath show is ready
to open both in the courtroom and at the polls for California's first
statewide "open primary."

Later this month, Peron and his leg-endary lawyer Tony Serra will begin their
pretrial maneuvering for Peron's criminal case. They intend their victory
in this one to guarantee once and for all the promise of Prop. 215, the
right of the sick and dying to have regular access to a life enhancing
supply of marijuana.

In the trial, Peron says, his Alameda County jury will have a chance to put
Oakland on the marijuana map of history: "We'll be asking the jury to
fully recognize the California Medical Marijuana Law in letter and spirit."

Peron cuts a dapper figure in his regu-lar white linen suit, appropriately
rumpled; his blue silk tie hangs loose at the neck. With his shock of white
hair above his ani-mated eyes, he looks a bit like an after-the-show Phil
Donahuin miniature. Peron stands S'S". And when be speaks, a slight trace
of his "longuyland" accent emerges, a tonal reminder of his suburban Long
Is-land childhood. An incarnation, he says with glee, that he's never
left-"I never want to grow up." He's quite content to r~ main the Peter Pan
of pot.

KEN KEIIEY: You entered electoral politics after a major police raid on
your home confiscated the marijuana for your lover, Jonatiian West, as he
lay dying' of AIDs. You dedicated the marijuana club to his memory.

DENNIS PERON: And I miss him terribly, every day of my life. I was with him
seven years. In the end he was so sick, it was horrible. It was after that
midnight bust in late October 1990 that I decided we needed a marijuana
distribution system for all the AIDS victims, sick and starving and dying.

I've been busted sixteen times, but that was the cruelesL They took four
ounces of top grade marijuana I kept to help Jonathan survive the
unbearable nausea he felt from the dozens of drugs prescribed for keep his
food down.

When the cops found out Jonathan had AIDS, out came the rubber gloves and
the sick jokes. When they saw an old photo of me hugging Harvey Milk, they
launched into a tirade about how they hated that fag. They arrested me for
possessing marijuana for sale.

That night in jail, I decided to do something about inhumane marijuana
laws. Six months later, the judge threw out my case when Jonathan, who
could barely make it to the stand, said the dope was his medi-cine. He died
two weeks later. His death inspired me and some friends to start the
Cannabis Cultivators Club and trust city voters to make it legal. We wrote
Proposi-tion P, which allowed medicinal marijuana providers to go about
their work without fear of arrest by city police. It passed by 80 percent
in 1991.

That really encouraged us and we lobbied throughout the state to change the
law. By 1994, we'd successfully lobbied both houses of the legislature to
pass the Medical Marijuana Resolution. Wilson vetoed it. Same bipartisan
passage of the Medical Necessity Defense Act in 1995; Wilson vetoed it. So
we wrote Proposition 215, got it on the ballot, and 56 percent of
Califor-nia voters enacted it.

The court action that forced you to close the Cannabis Cultivators Club was
a civil action brought by Attorney General Dan Lungren.

Yeah, though he used the same evidence that he's going to use against us in
the criminal case coming to trial in Oakland. He claims we exceeded the
limits of Prop. 215.

By shutting' down the club and reopening it, are you admitting that you
violated your own law by selling pot to caregivers, rather than directly to
patients?

No, because it wasn't illegal until it was ruled to be so by Judge Garcia.
There was nothing in the law, as written, that forbade selling pot to
caregivers. Caregivers are, essentially, the legs of the people who can't
get to the club because they're too sick. Garcia came up with the whole
caregiver issue-I think that was his way of getting rid of the case without
getting rid of us. He said nothing to prevent us from reopening again,
which is what we did.

Judge Garcia was deliberately cutting you some slack, then?

Well, he sure made it easy for us to reorganize and open a new club.

The term "caregiver' wasn't in the Prop. 215 law, what provisions of the
law did Lungren claim you were violating?

He alleged a lot of things: that I didn't check authorized medical
documents enough, that the club was creating a neigh-borhood nuisance, but
the only complaint the judge chose to find relevant was selling to
caregivers. So I'm technically guilty of that.

Are you planning to appeal Garcia's decision to recognize that narrow
definition prohibiting caregivers?

Hell no. It sets an easily accomplished new judicial standard-as long as
clubs don't sell to caregivers, they're in the clear.

So it bodes well for all the otherpot clubs, too-including the one in Oakland.

Yeah, that one's run by a great guy, Jeff Jones. He's doing the best he can
in a very difficult situation.

The forces ofthe law have pretty much left him alone, haven't they?

They have. He followed in my wake, so I presume they waited to see if they
could succeed on me before they go to him. If they get me, I'm sure they'll
try to get him.

So you're saying you weren't bothered at all byjudge Garcia's decision?

Look, it's always tough to accept defeat, you know? To say I broke the
law-I really don't like that It's a smear on my campaigu, for one thing.
How can I be governor if I'm just gonna go on breaking laws? But I was
breaking a law that hadn't even been es-tablished until Garcia's ruling. No
jury would have found me guilty of breaking a law that hadn't even been
defined yet.

Okay, my first reaction to Garcia's decision was-"Hey, bring on the tanks."
But cooler heads prevailed; then I realized that I could just step down.
This is what they want, so that's what I'll do.

You're saying Lungren didn't actually win.

You got it! Of course he claims victory:
Just like in Vietnam, where we declared victory and left.

Lungren's hardly leaving you alone. He's prosecuting you with great
determination in the criminal case that'll be heard next month in Oakland.
And you 're still in a judicial face off with the federal government, which
argues that Prop. 215 is illegal because marijuana is illegal under federal
law, which overrides state law-

Yeah, Big Brotherism at its very worst. That's the remaining civil action
against us:
US Attorney Thomas Yamaguchi asserting federal supremacy over this state's
citizens.

In the wake ofthe court's decision, if you had it to rewrite, would Prop.
215 have specified that caregivers are entitled to purchase pot?

If I had known the court would seize on technicalities, I would have
tightened up the technicalities to include caregivers. But it's hard to
anticipate what you will be held accountable for. If I'd written the law to
include caregivers, Lungren would have picked on something else.

How did you come to select the new Cannabis Healing Center's president,
Hazel Rogers?

She's been involved in the club for years; she'd taken a little hiatus when
her glaucoma got worse, but now she's back. She knows everything about the
club. Hazel is the "good-vibe monitor." She has a hundred or so people
working for her on staff, and mostly what she'll do is be a spokesperson
who can talk to the media and preside over the operations already in place.
She's the best-I couldn't get any better.

So, you chose her to reinvent the club?

Yeah, we've reinvented ourselves, with guidance from the court, which
essentially told us what to do, so we did it.

Sheriff Mike Hennessey, who supports you and was initially reluctant to
evict you under the court's order, says that the eviction operation went
smoothly, that he wished all his evictions were so civil and simple. Was
that your perspective, too?

Well, his deputies were nice enough to get rid of a lot of our garbage for us.

What do you mean?

The deputies did us a big favor-they removed a lot of our old pot plants
that were spindly and dying. They took away one of our weighing scales,
which was beyond repair anyway. They dumped a lot of broken cellophane
baggies. And they cleaned up the place. They got rid of a lot of the bugs.
And they said they'll water the plants for me.

Come again?

I told the deputies, I'm gonna try to get some of the plants back, so I
want you to water them for me, and they said okay. That way, maybe they can
spring back to life. You gotta love that-officially deputized pot-plant
sprinklers.

But all of this is minor league stuff compared to your upcoming criminal
trial in Oakland.
Yeah, this is the big bust, the one Dan Lungren will use to try to get rid
of me for a very long time. It's a heavy charge felonious possession of
marijuana with intent to sell. If I'm convicted, I face up to twelve years
in jail. This is not a "symbolic" trial or anything so lofty-it's about
depriving me and my four co defendants of our freedom.

What kind of case is Lungren amassing against you?

Essentially lies and subterfuge. They'll have to present the phony lists
they used on us: phony patients and phony doctors' offices, phony letters
of diagnosis used to buy small amounts and in one case one pound of
marijuana. For the pound, the guy made a phony claim that he was starting a
cannabis club to sell to sick and dying people up on the Russian River; he
told us his lover had died of AIDS and that he had AIDS. All lies! It's all
on video, too. He recites this tender lie about how his poor lover
died-touchingly twisted, I guess. On the tape, I'm shown trying to give him
names of Russian River people we know who can't make it down for help, and
he makes some lame excuse so he won't have to take their names down, which
made me kind of think at the time, but it was too late.

This was the basest kind of cop-phony-setup sting, so of course entrapment
is one of our big issues. All their taped evidence against us has us doing
just what we set out to do: getting marijuana to sick people. The major
issues are the abuse by the police, and the abuse by the attorney general
of the police. Think about it: the private police of the attorney general
trying to affect the outcome of the election. To have that much power-you
control all of law enforcement, with the potential to affect the outcome of
any political race.

Are you going to claim that, in light of Prop. 215, you're not breaking the
law?

Sure, we're saying that what we were doing is now legal. And, by inference,
that Lungren is breaking the law by prosecuting. We're trying to get him on
the stand. That would be fun! Somehow, he doesn't want to testify. We want
to know from his mouth, not why he started his investigation against us,
because we know it started when we turned in our signed Prop. 215
qualifying petitions. He knows we're selling pot, but he sends hundreds of
his agents out door-to-door, his planes circling our office, following
people relentlessly.

And all they could come up with was itty-bitty bags of pot for sick people.
Lungren needs more-let's use force, he says, and they do. Three weeks
before the election, five of us are busted and threatened with twelve years
in prison. We'd like to ask Lungren in open court to explain the reasoning
behind his criminal conspiracy. Which of course immediately backfired:
three hours later the TV world saw me walking out of the Oakland jail. And
a fair number of viewers no doubt cast their ballots with that picture in
mind, probably delivering quite a few more votes to our margin of victory.
I think from then on people saw that it's obvious political opportunism,
deliberate electoral interference, and that it's wrong.

Why do you think Lungren chose Oakland for this trial?

I can't imagine. Why would Lungren choose a city whose citizens voted 72
per-cent for 215? I know people in Oakland are open-minded, liberal
freethinkers. They know about police injustice. They want a pie, and an end
to the cycle of violence which the drug war is feeding.

Meaning?

It just seems so logical to me that when you have a junkie who's hopelessly
hooked on heroin who has to steal $300 worth of goods every day to get the
$150 he needs for his habit . . .what does the heroin actu-ally cost? Maybe
fifteen cents. So many people get killed and hurt between that fifteen
cents and the three hundred dol-lars the addict needs. We should look to
the way Britain does it-heroin on demand is treatment, too.

Why is that such a good thing?

It stops heroin-related crime, and puts the addicts in a place where
eventually we can reach out and get them off the drug. It frees all the
addicts from the tyranny of the black market A heroin addict is not
nec-essarily the same thing as a bad person-I don't know a single one who
woke up one bright sunny day and said, Gee, I think I'll become ajunkie today.

Given your feelings about legalizing drugs, is it fair to say that Prop.
215 really was a sham, just the first step toward the goal you really want:
complete legalization ofmarijuana?

(Laughs) Well-how can I answer something like that? I dedicated the club to
a young man, my lover who died of AIDS. You can't get any more pure than
that. And people can say what they want-I do want marijuana
legalization-but to call it a sham is to, like, shame my dead lover, and I
think that's very wrong.

Hey, Prop. 215 was designed to keep people out of jail while letting
doctors participate in their healing. Marijuana is appropriate medicine, so
do it. It's been around in Chinese pharmacopoeia for many illnesses for
many centuries. People were using it as medicine, so I felt the law should
reflect that reality.

The federal government says heroin and marijuana are both Class-A
narcotics. Wasn't Clinton supposed to be the one who knows better?

Another hypocrite We all know who Bill Clinton he's the man who doesn't
really know who he is, and that's his problem.

He wants to be all things to all people. In the end, those people wind up
being nothing to anybody. I feel sorry for Clinton, too, that it's too bad,
now that he doesn't have anything to lose, that he can't let people know
who he is. And you know he inhaled
-this coy little winking and nodding about pot. It's disgusting. Same with
fags in the military-don't tell anybody, lie and you're okay.

It's his throwing a bone to the profes-sional drug warriors. Granted,
they've been thrown quite a few already, but what I represent is flagrant,
in-your-face stuff that drives narko types nuts. They'll never change. We
have to wait for them to die out. Maybe I'll stress out a few to encourage
some untimely demises. (Laughs)

Willie Brown says he has tried to pressure Clinton to drop the Justice
Department case against you.

It's important that Mayor Brown has offered, but I don't think Clinton will
bend. It's a shame that at a time when nobody's buying it anymore that
smack and weed are even remotely similar that Clinton should stay on the
road to ignorance. I hate it when I hear cynics who demean voters as
dummies; I'm not a cynic. I think voters are pretty smart. They sure have
proved it by me so far.

Which no doubt encouraged you when you decided to challenge the attorney
gener-l for the GOP nomination for governor. He greeted your announcement
by saying you'd "been smoking even more than I thought",
He knows who I am, and he knows I'm going to give him a run. In fact, in
many ways, Dan Lungren created me, so let him live with it. I mean, no one
really heard of me before I got busted with the club and it led to 215,
where in the campaign he blamed me for everything wrong in society His
attacks gave me the strength to go on and fight him. This is not about me
disliking him personally, since I've never met the man. I'm sure he can be
quite charming. They say Strom Thurmond can be quite charming. (Laughs) At
the same time, I detest his philosophy of government.

And I charge that Lungren misused his powers to affect the outcome of an
election-he busted us twice in the '96 election season-which to me is
reprehensible. He knew full well what the Cannabis Cultivators Club has
been doing for years. The second we collected our thousands of signatures
to get Prop. 215 on the November ballot, Lungren starts an investigation.
He singled me out with outright lies that I'm an out of control dope dealer
selling to anybody Fortunately, Lungren's ploy totally backfired. The
people decisively passed Prop. 215 and it became law.

Did you deliberately turn Republican just to tweak Lungren's political nose?

Not at all. When I tell my friends I'm Republican, they look at me like I
just beat my dog. Nowadays, instead of being thought the party of Lincoln,
the right-wingers are turning it into a party of division and hate. I keep
this copy of The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln right here on my desk,
for easy reference. Let me quote him directly on the subject of
Prohibition: "Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason, in that it
attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out
of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very
principles on which our government was founded." How true.

And they weren't even thinking about prohibiting marijuana then. Destroy
the healthy hemp plant? Hell no!

Are you in favor ofthe move to tax marijuana as the price of growing it
legally?

No, because how can you tax people's gardens? It's like taxing corn.

What makes you the best candidate for governor?

I'm sure there's someone better in, say, economics than I. But I figure, as
governor, I would set the right moral tone. Leaders should know simple
right from wrong, but politicians never seem to. You can't count on 'em to
do right.

Teddy Roosevelt-he was a good Republican governor before he became
president. He got the mine workers their first union contract. He busted
some monopolies. He spoke his mind, instead of toeing the latest line. So
Lincoln, TR.-I run in the finest tradition!

And, having tried other political parties -Democrat, Green, Libertarian-I
felt at home as a liberty loving Republican candidate who refuses to sit
back and let the party of Lincoln get highjacked by right-wing extremists
like the Dan Lungrens of this world. I hold the firm Republican belief that
big government is not the answer; I want government off our backs and our
fronts. We pay too much in taxes to make things we don't need like B4
bombers that can't even go out undetected in the rain.

See, I'm running to preserve democracy. The guys in charge now have too
much power, which they abuse so much it threatens democracy itself as the
chosen form of governance.

Still sounds like you're the round peg that can't fit the square hole of
current Re-publican leadership.

If it were up to those guys, they'd ban Abraham Lincoln from the Republican
Party. And if courageous guys like William Weld can stand proud as a
Republican, so can I. There are other people like me who are fiscal
conservatives and also socially conscious. So I'm a liberal Republican. To
some its a self canceling phrase, but I'm the only one in this race even
saying "liberal."

How well do you expect to do in the June race-the state's first "open
primary" where voters can cross party lines and choose candidates from all
parties?

That's certainly an accidental bit of my good fortune. Anything can happen.
I never know what to expect-I never expected Prop. 215 to get such a large
vote. I do think fifteen percent is not out of reach, and would represent a
significant showing from an emerging Republican constituency.

What was the defining moment when you decided to take on Lungren?

Right after my second Lungren arrest in October '96, three weeks before the
election. I woke up in the Alameda County Jail, and I just knew then I had
to run. I announced a year later. It was a pretty gruesome bust-much like
the Lungren-engineered first bust in August. In August, almost 150 of
Lungren's goons came crashing in on a Sunday, the day we're closed. We knew
they'd been sniffin' around-we caught them observing us for the past two
and a half months, so many times it was embarrassing. We caught them trying
to videotape us, trying to be subtle but acting so obvious. They grabbed
all the pot--I don't know how much they got-and they took a lot of money.
The first report said they got sixty pounds of weed. Then it grew to 260
pounds. (when I get it back, I'll be glad to take the additional amount
with me. I give it all away, anyway.)

Then, in late October, goons in five simultaneous raids busted my home and
four other houses, and arrested five of us, booked us at the Alameda County
Jail for felony sales of marijuana.

Let's take an inward turn for now. where did you grow up?

Who says I grew up? Okay, in Elmont, Long Island. I grew up a huge Brooklyn
Dodgers fan. The greatest day of my life was the day they won the World
Series in 1955 against the Yankees. I was eight years old.

It was a very suburban middle class-to-the-zenith family of five kids. I
left at eighteen. I got drafted into the Army, so I joined the Air Force
and was sent to Keesler Air
Force Base, in Biloxi, Mississippi. I figured the Air Force wouldn't send
me to Vietnam.

Where's the flrst place they sent you after training?

Straight to Vietnam. But just before I left, I had an epiphany. I visited
Haight-Ash-bury, in 1967; it was the "Autumn of Love." I spent 25 days
there, didn't have any money, but felt like the richest guy around.

I took a lifelong vow of poverty-that whatever money came my way, it was
only "mine" as to what I could spread around to share with all my friends.
Since then, I've had so many friends. I knew money in and of itself would
never make me happy; that the only wealth would come from people who loved
me whom I loved back. If that makes me sound like a
hippie-dippy-dovey-dovey do-gooder flake, I can't help it; one thing I'm
not is a fake.

So what happened in Vietnam?

I made sergeant pretty soon. I worked in the mail room. The first week
there, I saw the charred remains of a Buddhist monk who'd just immolated
himself. That blew me away; I began my now firm embrace of Buddhism. And it
set me up for the next epiphany I was about to experience. It came during
the Tet Offensive, February, 1968. The mail room was closed down because
the airport was closed down. They couldn't ship out all the dead bodies to
Saigon, because the planes couldn't leave. So I was assigned to stuff
people into body bags.

That was a real turning point in my life, a catharsis. I had gone to Viemam
not exactly pro-war, but vaguely thinking we were "helping them." I
remember going around thinking nothing but "This is insane!" over and over.
I decided the only way I could go on was to dedicate my life to the cause
of world peace. I was disciplined for wearing -a black armband when I was
dealing with the body bags. During a stateside leave I marched in the
Washington Moratorium against the war.

After that heavy year in Vietnam, I was transferred to a base in Thailand
that officially didn't exist. I was nineteen. I was literally in the middle
of nowhere, near the Laotian border. America had launched a secret war,
dropping thousands of tons of bombs on Laos every nine minutes, allegedly
to stop the Ho Chi Minh supply trail, which it never came close to doing.

My job was to track nonexistent planes on -nonexistent flights for a
nonexistent base
Then I worked for Air America, with no idea that it was CIA, until I got
back home.

Was it in Vietnam that you first made it with another guy?

Yep.

what? Blowjob in a foxhole?

You got it. I love the way that trips off the lips. Sounds almost as sexy
backward "Foxjob in a blowhole." (Laughs)

Leaving Vietnam behind...

I hit home at Travis Air Force Base and proceeded immediately to live in
the Haight. Four months later, I got busted the werf first time--for
smoking dope in Golden Gate Park.

By the horse patrol; the cop - snuck up on me as I was just tokin' away, a
happy little flower child. ~aughs) I got three years' probation: my first
days back, and I'm snared into the war on drugs.

Did that stop you from dealing pot?

Well, I was going to City College studying psychiatry, when I realized the
job of a psychiatrist is to make patients, who are no less well-adjusted
than he is, happy. Didn't ring right to me. I figured marijuana is the
honest way to make people happy. But to answer your question, no, it didn't
stop me from dealing pot. In reality, I became a pot dealer the moment I
walked off the plane after Vietnam. I was dealing when I was first busted,
yes. An ounce was called a "lid," and it sold for ten bucks tops. A hundred
bucks a pound. You made forty bucks on a pound, you could pay your rent and
keep a little to smoke.
I saw you dicker with someone over a pound where you ended up at $3,000
Yeah, that was for twelve-star. The best. We rank from one-star at the
bottom, all the way up.

Who can tell the difference between eleven-star and twelve?

Our very particular members. Enough grams to keep you stoked for about
sixty dollars. Back then, as my clientele increased, I became a bigger
dealer, and eventually it turned into the Pot Supermarket, at Liberty and
Castro. It ran from 1974 through 1977, when the police shot me.

What happened?

The cops raided my house, but the first guy in wasn't wearing his shield
for identi-fication. He was a big black guy with an Afro and a floppy
hat-Mod-Squad~nark?

You got it. Anyway, of course I thought this was an organized ripoff of my
house. I was worried about the other people inside, so I held up this empty
Alhambra water bottle that was standing next to the stair-case, up above my
head so it would seem like "Fucket; go downstairs, or I'll throw this in
your face," even though I saw he had a gun. Then he shot me. The bottle
fell back; I fell down. I got hit through my right femur bone, which
shattered in my leg. They eventually busted 44 of us.

In the end, I got sentenced to six months in San Bruno. But before I went,
Harvey Milk helped me get the 16,000 signatures needed to put Prop. W on
the ballot. That was the 1978 version of the medical marijuana initiative
that took the money to enforce marijuana laws away from the narks. It won;
it was non-binding, but Milk was going to try to make it binding after he
was elected supervisor.

Wasn't Harvey Milk another Long Is-land boy?

That he was. I met him when he was the play Lenny in New York. He moved out
here and he became my friend and mentor. Just before I got out of San
Bruno, he was assassinated. And then everybody forgot about Prop. W. Dianne
Feinstein, of course, hated Prop. W

After the six months in San Bruno, you moved back to your commune, the Big
Top Collective?

Right. Plus I'd started the Island restaurant in the Castro. I get out,
then Jonestown. Then no more Harvey, no more George Moscone. Soon Reagan's
president; AIDS starts to kill my friends. Shit hits the proverbial fan,
and it stays there for a very long time. Jonathan dies. I start to organize
and the long arm of Dan Lungren starts its stranglehold.

C'mon-you 're the self proclaimed optimist. Aren't you pretty confident of
beating the Oakland rap?

You're right, I really am. Because all they have is a bunch of lying narks
who made their sexist and racist comments and displayed their brutality on
the ultimate posterity of videotape.

I make this very clear: I'm not on trial - Lungren's narks are on trial.
Everybody knows what I was doing. But no one knows what they were
doing-until we play their own tapes!

I think a jury of my Oakland peers will be outraged by what the narks did,
wasting their tax money in a place they had no business being. Imagine: one
by one, 75 narks take the stand describing how they smashed into the
Cannabis Club, how they stole our marijuana, how they pushed aside sick and
dying people. We'll show tapes of them engaging in outrageous lies to get
into the club, playing on our peoples' sympathy.

The jury will get to see all the people who are the club. Like the 78
year-old woman who will sweetly say about why she signed up a lying nark:
"I do remember signing that person up and she told me she had a yeast
infection and I felt terrible for her because l had one myself, and they
really hurt, so I took her to the side and hugged her, since I didn't know
she was a narcotics agent." The jury will hear things like that.

Then we'll hear what they did: "Well, we flew our Cessna airplane over the
Cannabis Club, we followed five or six cars for about four hours. They went
home. Then we followed Mr. Peron. He went down to Castro Street by himself.
He gave a homeless person a dollar bill."

So you see, I have faith in my potential Oakland jurors to fairly judge for
themselves who's guilty of what.

And there's another important aspect of the Oakland trial: with Proposition
215 we didn't change all the stupid laws like "the pipe paraphernalia law"
or "the transportation law" or the "packaging law." But those Alameda
County jurors have a chance to change those laws, by just acquitting us.
Just saying, No, this is it! Yeah, they were guilty under an old law, but
who cares? They were doing the right thing.

The verdict in the Oakland trial may come just before the June primary is a
re-play on the way of another Lungren reversal offortune? Would his defeat
in a show trial boomerang on him and hurt his campaign, the way his
preelection bust helped Prop. 215 pass?

Yeah, that's the bright side. But expensive. And draining. And a drag.

On the other hand, if you lose this case, you face a dozen years in jail.
When you decided to get involved with politics, did you ever think things
would get this heavy?
No, not in my worst nightmares. I'm a very unlikely warrior; I'm not cutout
to be a hero. Had it not been for Jonathan dying and losing all my friends
to AIDS, I wouldn't have done it. That's still a big part of what keeps me
going. I used to say I had no past -because everyone died in my past.

And now [Pauses, wipes his eyes] I don't even know, I'm not sure about my
past. I used to look at a picture and turn around to find somebody who was
there to remember that moment. Now nobody's around, and everyone in the
picture is dead, except me. I keep trying to ask myself about the
past-like, what happened? I find myself thinking about it often, but I'm
not really sure. Here my best friends are dead and I'm very lonely. And I
experienced the isolation that people who have AIDS feel-like my Jonathan.
All covered with welts and lesions -people don't look pretty, you know?
Here at the club, nobody judges you for how pretty you are, how much money
you don't have, or anything else. Everybody can relax in dignity and
comfort. Everybody can get a little less lonely. This club was my way of
bringing those people together and, "whew!-I'm not alone!" But I sure wish
Jonathan were here. I really need him! He was smart, gregarious, plus he
was so beautiful and absolutely adored me. He was nineteen when we met.
Took me a whole year to get into his pants (Laughs) I kept reminding
myself-"Hey! What'd I do right to deserve all this?"

You know, sometimes when I think of Jonathan-I'm glad if what I've done
made Dan Lungren mad. He deserves it, since in a way, I'm Lungren's
conscience.

How so?

Outside he emits this gruff-in-tone politician who is ruled by the morality
of religion. He professes to be a Roman Catholic, yet he's for killing
people with the death penalty. I know he was pro-Vietnam, but he never
served-unlike me, who did.

He typifies the politics of convenience. He doesn't really have any
convictions and takes sides on issues without really knowing anything. As a
career politician, he's never stood for anything but meanness and hate.

And look at his rotten record in office -take the prison system alone. The
whole prison system is out of order, guards setting up inmate
gladiator-fights and shooting 'em down.

The federal government brought charges against the prison personnel, while
Lungren's investigation was a whitewash and a cover-up. Dan Lungren should
be indicted for the concerted cover-up in that probe; it was rotten from
the bottom to the top, and Lungren sits right at the top.

Will you bell him with that when you debate him in the governor's contest?

I doubt very much he'll appear with me. But, let me take the chance here
and now to issue that challenge: Mr. Lungren, I challenge you for the soul
of the Republican Party. I'll debate you anytime, anywhere, as many times
as you want. Please have your people call me with your answer so we can
begin planning! There. Now we'll see.

What was it like for you and your minions who attended the San Diego
Republican state convention in January? Were you warmly embraced?

I went in a suit and tie, very politician-looking I thought I told
everybody else to wear their "best," which means nice clean clothes, and
sorry Mr. Armani. I figured if while the other delegates wouldn't perhaps
welcome us, they'd at least be tolerant, and maybe even ask me to say
something.

Erroneously. We stuck out right away because of our variety-we were brown,
white, black, gay people. That's the bottom line. There was like one
official black Republican delegate, and we had some twenty African
Americans with us. A lot of our people had AIDS. There were about sixty of
us altogether.

So did you just appear, unannounced?

We had banners that announced us (Laughs). We got on the grounds until a
security guard stopped us and said "no further." I protested that this was
a public hotel. "Yeah, but it's been rented out and you can't get in!"
Someone spots the kitchen entrance, so we go down through the windows past
dumbfounded food workers and boom-we end up right smack dab in the middle
of the convention hall. So we have all our signs, and we start to march
around in a convention floor demonstration. You know-like what you're supposed
to do at a convention, as everyone who's watched 'em on TV knows.

Security erupted all around us. "They-are-in-the-building-now-hey're-on-the
-floor-oh-my-God where-are-they?" They saw a group of black people, who
they knew shouldn't be there, and they went to our man Tom Jones. They went
to the wrong guy.? At the top of his lungs, Tom belts out, "I went to World
War II for my country, don't you racist pigs be tellin' me I can't be
inside here!" So then other delegates start hittin' their signs, going,
"Go, Danny, Go!" We'd alternate with, "Peron! Hope! Compassion!"

So I decide to make a speech. I go up these narrow stairs to a small
staircase at the rear of the hall. Security and the Danny-boys are all
around me as I get ready to talk. The whole floor goes quiet. I don't speak
loud, but everybody can hear. "I came here to be part of the big tent," I
sald. "I want to be your governor, I want to let you know who I am." Then I
gave my speech about trying to bring people together. "But here you are
acting like big babies trying to throw me out I'll leave, but you'll lose
something when this delegation walks out" Then security pushed us out the
exit, we walk outdoors, and all the media swarm around, "what happened?" So
I got to do a dramatic recreation.

Then the cops came. Security said, "Arrest them!" Cops said, "We don't want
any part of this," and split.

So were you taken aback by the rude reception?

I would have liked them to say something nice.

Awwww-they hurt your feelings?

Look, they could have gone along with it. It would have given them some
energy. They had a coronation-nobody running against their man except me,
no passion behind the man, he doesn't mean anything, everybody knows he's a
big loser. They have no one to hate, so if they'd at least hated me, it
would have given them some energy!

One politician who has supported you is San Francisco DA Terrence Hallinan.

He's nothing short of the revolutionary district attorney in the whole
country. About marijuana, he's taken the stand people support, a stand in
favor of changing the marijuana laws. It's a cause he's supported for
years. Now that the law has changed, everybody wants to back away from
it--not Hallinan. He's been waiting a long time to reorder society so that
we can deal with vi-olent crime-real crime-and not bogus marijuana cases.
He proves his courage.

Specifically, he has said that if the Cannabis Cultivators Club were ever
to get shut down, he would organize a way for city workers to take the
responsibility for distributing marijuana to the medically needy. Yes-you
can't get any better than that, can you? Think of it-cops giving away pot!
I love it!

Would it work?

I think it'd be great The cops have a lot of pot in storage, and they could
roll up joints out of San Bruno jail....

So you seriously wouldn't mind being put out of business that way?

I wouldn't mind. Of course, they'd screw it up. I could be a special
advisor on the sidelines or something. Then I could go out and do something
I've always wanted to do-get a farm. I'd get to grow marijuana for the
first time. I've never tried, but I've always wanted to obey the slogan,
"Grow Your Own."

There are twelve-step programs advertised to help marijuana addicts. So
what do you think: does frequent pot use create addicts?

It's a bogus notion. It's part of a disinformation campaign, largely funded
by those treatment people for whom chemical de-endency has become a big
business. If they only have heroin and alcohol, that's limiting their
treatment. But if they can add pot-they've got really big business. They've
been treating people who like pot for years! In a word-it's a ruse. A
subtle one that plays on people's worst fears.

Do you ever fixate on what will happen if you lose in Oakland, that you 'Il
actually go to prison for your beliefs?

Oh, yeah, but what the hell-put me in with a bunch of men-it could be worse.

Look, I'll make the best of things, I always have. I was supposed to have
died in the Vietnam War. I was supposed to have died when that cop shot me.
I was supposed to have died in the AIDS epidemic. I feel like it's a
miracle I'm here. So, what the hell!

In terms ofyour campaign, has all the new publicity helped you?

Well, I had just over one percent of the vote in the polls before the
hubbub you need five percent to qualify for inclusion in the official TV
debates. The new poll will come out in mid-May -the publicity has got to
help me there. I know I've got at least five percent; we'll wait and see
what the poll shows. There are nineteen people running for governor, you
know. Nobody 5 ever heard of most of them, except the big candidates who've
spent the big bucks and, now, me.

After the election-presuming you don't win the nomination-what's your next
move?

I'm going to open new clubs, one in San Francisco and probably one in Los
Angeles.

The new Cannabis Healing Center will stay around...

Oh, yeah-that'll still be there long after I die. That will always be the
flagship.

How would another new San Francisco club differ?

It wouldn't be much different. It d be pretty much the same, but not at
that Market Street address. The difference is I'd like to be able to be
there to run it, which I'm prevented from doing now at the Cannabis Healing
Center.

So what are your duties there, now that you've deposed yourself?

None. Ijust hang around a bit, to be there when Hazel asks my advice. My
only real duty now is running for governor.

Any final words for Lungren?

Yeah-now that the whole state knows I'm running for governor, let me say.
Thank you, Danny! I love you!