Date: Wed, 07 Aug 1996 21:18:23 -0500
From: "Carl E. Olsen" <[c--l] at [dsmnet.com]>
Subject: Further Chron Coverage of Pot raid

This appeared on 1st page of 2nd section of the 8/6/96 Chronicle:

Latest setback in founder's long crusade

By Maitland Zane
Chronicle Staff Writer

Dennis Peron has been defiantly dealing grass in San Francisco for more
than 20 years.

Long before he founded the Cannabis Buyers' Club, which was raided by state
narcotics officers Sunday, Peron was an advocate for the legalization of
marijuana. In the mid-1970s, he ran the Big Top pot supermarket on Castro
Street, which offered customers sample merchandise to taste, regular hours
and a mellow environment-until it became too blatant for police to ignore.
Peron was shot in the leg when police raided the operation in 1977.

Peron, 50, a Bronx-born Viet Nam veteran, called the marijuana emporium "a
service to the community." His claim that he was not in business for the
money was backed up at the time by a community activist named Harvey Milk,
then running for supervisor: "Dennis is the opposite of a profiteer'" Milk
said. "I've seen his money and energy going back to the community."

Peron ran unsuccessfully for the Board of Supervisors in 1989 on a platform
calling for the legalization of marijuana. The AIDS plague, especially the
death of his lover, Jonathan West, in 1990, turned him into a crusader for
medical marijuana.

"I've lost at least 200 friends," Peron said recently. "Toward the end of
his short life Jonathan's body was covered with KS lesions.

But he said marijuana really helped him. It gave him dignity; he could even
laugh sometimes. When he died at age 29, I decided to dedicate myself to
helping all people who were suffering and dying of HIV."

The Cannabis Buyers' Club opened for business in 1994, selling marijuana to
people with AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis, glaucoma or other painful
ailments. Local law enforcement authorities took their cue from sympathetic
city officials and looked the other way.

Peron said membership has tripled to 12,000 since the club opened. The
club, which started out in a loft at Church and Markel streets, recently
moved to a four story building on Market near Polk.

Inside, there is a big-screen TV and a big fern bar with couches and easy
chairs for patrons to socialize, as well as a sales counter, a snack bar, a
performance space for musicians, and a gift shop with pipes, pro-pot
T-shirts and Brownie Mary cookbooks.

Prices range as high as $80 for an eighth of an ounce of top-grade
sinsemilla. The pot comes sealed in baggies with a "Rx" sticker saying "Not
for Resale."

Peron works in an office with a poster of his hero, Milk, on the wall
and-until Sunday's raid-a dozen pot plants on his desk.

The club pays him a salary, as it does for several other staff members, but
Peron says he still lives "very simply" in a five-member commune.

Peron led the Northern California campaign that collected 763,000
signatures to put Proposition 215, which would legalize marijuana for
medical use, on the November ballot.

Peron said Sunday's raid, which happened while he was vacationing in
Canada, won't deter his efforts to legalize pot for medicinal purposes:

"Customers come in who upset and nauseous, and leave here with a smile on
their faces. If they weren't buying they'd be getting robbed and beaten up
in Dolores Park. Here, we're helping them stay alive."
==========================================================
Tom O'Connell





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