Unequal Injustice in
California:
The View From Dennis Peron’s Cannabis Farm
June 21, 1999
By Richard Cowan
It is nice to see my old friend Dennis Peron again in the relaxed surroundings of his
Lake County Cannabis Farm. Certainly Dennis deserves a little peace and quiet
after years of frontline activism. He seems to be genuinely surprised that what he started
as a local San Francisco medical marijuana initiative has spread to so many other states.
The Buyers Club movement, which he took to new levels, has also grown since
Dennis’ own club was closed for the dual sin of being too visible and helping those
who need it most, those whom George Bernard Shaw ironically labeled "the undeserving
poor," those who do not meet the middle class’s concept of what the poor are
supposed to look like.
See
Peron
Cleans Memories Out Of The Closed Market Street Cannabis Club
Dennis just never could accept the notion that the poor and sick were supposed to be
miserable. His "club" was really like a social club for them, where they
shamelessly enjoyed the medically unacceptable euphoric side-effects of medical marijuana.
See
The New
York Times Gives Surprisingly Sympathetic Coverage to Dennis Peron’s Cannabis
Cultivators Club
It is also nice to see live plants again for the first time since I visited Holland
last September.
See
Greetings From Amsterdam!
The plants here are being grown by a variety of patients, and a few are beginning to
look very promising. I am sorry that I won’t be around for the harvest.
The DEA seems to have given up on busting Dennis, after hitting the farm twice last
year.
See
Peron
Replants After The DEA Destroys Medical Marijuana Harvest
Now the major threat to the plants comes from thieves, who apparently don’t work
for the government. Another problem with marijuana prohibition and contraband markets.
However, as today’s other stories make clear, progress in California is real, but
very unequal.
On the good side, there are a number of clubs that have opened in San Francisco to fill
the need created when Dennis’s huge club was closed last year. It is unlikely that
they will be able to fill the needs of the most vulnerable segments for whom Dennis’s
place was a refuge.
In a rather bizarre twist, two groups are even applying to grow cannabis for the Feds.
But that is even weirder than it seems, as you will see.
And although Los Angeles County should be a good place for medical marijuana patients,
at least one judge seems not to have heard of the 1st Amendment, much less Prop
215.
And in a plot twist that we couldn’t make up, down in Orange County another judge
who would not hear of Prop 215 has had a learning experience. It is unlikely that he will
learn anything himself, but it is a priceless opportunity for us to demonstrate the absurd
hypocrisy of the marijuana laws enforced by drunken judges.
Meanwhile back at the farm, Dennis is concentrating on just two political objectives.
He wants to amend the state law against marijuana sales by adding just four words:
"except for medical purposes." Although this is entirely in keeping with the
spirit of Prop 215 and the people overwhelmingly support medical marijuana, Dennis was
unable to get even a single sponsor in the last session of the state legislature, not even
from our supposed friends. His other objective is even more modest, to require California
to reschedule marijuana when the Feds do so.
If you want to see pictures and learn more about the farm see www.marijuana.org
Over the next week or so, I will have more reports on the Bay Area scene.
Supported