Sheriff Won’t Close Down Pot Club Despite State Raid, San Francisco Sheriff Says He Won’t Bust People Using Marijuana For Medical Purposes

San Francisco’s sheriff is refusing to enforce a court order to close down a club that sold marijuana to medical patients to help ease their suffering and boost their appetites.

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No criminal charges have been filed.The sheriff noted that the ban on medicinal marijuana would be repealed by Proposition 215, a November ballot initiative whose statewide campaign headquarters are at the club.