A Superior Court judge yesterday rejected California Attorney General Dan Lungren’s request to immediately close San Francisco’s newly renamed medical marijuana dispensary, the Cannabis Healing Center. The judge ruled that the state failed to present sufficient evidence that the club was engaging in illegal activity.
“I’m delighted,” said 79-year-old Hazel Rogers, the club’s new director. “It will give us some breathing room and allow us … to serve our thousands of sick and dying patients.”
Judge William Cahill will hear evidence from both sides of the issue at a new hearing in June.
“We’re saving lives,” explained Rogers, who took over for former club director Dennis Peron last week. “We will be happy to go to court and show Judge Cahill how important it is for us to be here relieving pain and suffering.”
Attorney J. David Nick, who represents the club, argued that Rogers is a legally authorized “caregiver” to the estimated 500 patients who visit the center each day and require medical marijuana.
Earlier this month, Superior Court Judge David Garcia granted an injunction calling for the closure of the city’s largest dispensary — then named the San Francisco Cultivators Club — after finding evidence that it supplied medical marijuana to other clubs. Rogers said that the Healing Center only provides medical marijuana to individualized patients who possess a doctor’s recommendation.
“Our patients, and there must be 9,000 of them, if they don’t have this place for them to get legal medical marijuana they’ll have to become criminals, or at least take chances and do it out on the street,” Rogers said.
For more information, please contact either Tanya Kangas, Esq. of The NORML Foundation @ (202) 483-8751 or Dale Gieringer of California NORML @ (415) 563-5858. To contact Californians for Compassionate Use, please call (415) 621-3986.
