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With 6,000 members, San Francisco's three-year-old Cannabis
Buyers' Club is the largest, most well-organized medical marijuana co-op
in the country. The organization has just moved into a well-marked, five-story
building, paid for by private donations. It has its own pot bar, where you
can get three different varieties of marijuana. The club is the only one in the country that operates legally, thanks to a 1993 ballot referendum approved by 80 percent of the city's voters and a hands-off policy from Mayor Frank Jordan.
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"We have an unbelievable [variety of] clientele,
from people wearing three-piece suits
to little old ladies," says founder and co-op
director Dennis Peron, the local granddaddy
of the movement, a '60s throwback who sounds a bit like Dennis Hopper in
slow-motion. "I get a lot of pilgrims who come out here to see how I pulled
this thing off," he says. "I give them the advice that this is really
about pain and love and loss. It's about empowerment,
and it's really about compassion." Whatever it's about, San Francisco has served Peron and his cause pretty well. "We started with |
 maybe 10 or 15 people,
and from there things just snowballed," he says.Peron says he was inspired to start the club after Jonathan West, his lover of 10 years, was killed by AIDS in September of 1991. Marijuana, Peron says, made West's last days livable. "He was taking drugs that were causing nausea, a loss of appetite," Peron remembers. "He was feeling awful. Marijuana made him feel a little better, and that's very important for someone who's scared and facing death. Marijuana gave him a little dignity in his life."
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