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Marijuana club owners decry order

San Leandro, CA Sept 9, 2005 -- With spacious couches, a trickling indoor fountain and a smoothie bar, A Natural Source marijuana club takes extra steps to create a tranquil getaway from life's worries.

But the lights were still dark at 10 Thursday morning, stoking a growing sense of gloom in the club owned by a man who calls himself Billy M. The club has provided calm refuge for medical marijuana patients for more than a year - and won raves for treading lightly in the neighborhood.

The mood shifted dramatically two weeks ago when a gang of men wielding assault rifles robbed the place. Billy M. shot one of the men in an exchange of gunfire as the bandits fled.

The club's owner is very interested in keeping his name out of the press and out of public records.

Now the county's hard-nosed sheriff, Charles Plummer, has told the club and two other dispensaries in Alameda County they have to shut down by Sept. 30.

"Any continued operation of your marijuana dispensary thereafter is subject to appropriate legal remedy," Plummer wrote in a letter to the three clubs last week.

Officially, the shutdown order has nothing to do with the fatal Aug. 19 shootout. Instead, it's prompted by the county's new marijuana dispensary law, which demanded applications by Aug. 30 from six marijuana clubs in the county's unincorporated area if they hoped for a permit to remain in business.

But to Billy M., the issues are very much related.

A former landscaper who employs eight people in a spacious store space in the shadow of Interstate 580, Billy M. says he was ready to meet the deadline until he had a change of heart and withheld his application in protest.

His turnabout, he said, came about the time the shots rang out in the parking lot of his shop - and he felt with a chill that the county's lengthy questionnaire demanded too much personal information.

"Part of this application is going to become public record ... and that's one step closer for people to find out who I am," he said. Noting that some of the bandits remain at large, he adds: "There are people out there I don't want to know who I am."

Complaints about the application are being joined by a lawyer for another club, the Garden of Eden, who has threatened legal action if the county doesn't reel in its application requirements.

Billy M. says he wants to avoid a fight and hopes a compromise can be reached that will allow him to apply for a permit without coughing up too many details.

Officials in Plummer's office said Thursday they have no intention of extending the deadline, though the sheriff himself is out of town this week.

"The questions are part of a thorough background check that we feel is appropriate," said sheriff's Capt. Steve Roderick.

"The sheriff is not going to take his responsibility lightly to ensure the people running these businesses are well-intentioned and not tied to some money-laundering or drug trafficking organization."

Patients who patronize A Natural Source say the sheriff's hard line pains them.

"I will be really sad if this place closes down," said Margaret, a 63-year-old registered nurse from Oakland who arrived Thursday to pick up the marijuana she smokes to relieve chronic joint pain.

She said she didn't want to disclose her last name due to the stigma society attaches to marijuana use.

Despite the sheriff's position, there are signals at the top of the county hierarchy that clubs such as A Natural Source might get a second chance.

County supervisors Nate Miley and Alice Lai-Bitker, whose districts include the dispensaries, say they think the application questions may stray too far from relevance.

"There's got to be some reasonableness," Miley said, "and my first reading of those applications left me feeling they weren't reasonable."

The supervisors said they are awaiting a legal interpretation from County Counsel Richard Winnie, who was called in to review the complaints after attorney Garden of Eden attorney Dennis Roberts suggested in August that he may be willing to take the county to court.

"(The) application far exceeds what is required by the ordinance and some of the information serves no useful purpose," Roberts wrote.

Winnie says he's still reviewing the county's options, a process that wasn't helped by the absence this week of Plummer, Roberts and county Supervisors Keith Carson and Scott Haggerty, who were on an official trip to Japan.

Winnie suggested he, too, might be open to a compromise -- but urged everyone to remain calm.

"A lawsuit could result in our ordinance being overturned," he said.

"Then, instead of the county stepping in to regulate and demand the best from these clubs, you have cataclysm."