TOO HIGH IN CALIFORNIA?

A six-foot cannabis leaf painted on the front door proudly advertises the wares of the San Francisco Cannabis Cultivators Club. Inside the five-story glass-and-concrete emporium on busy Market Street, origami cranes and LEGALIZE POT posters provide the decor, while live flamenco dancers on a third-floor stage supply the entertainment. At either of two bars, customers–all of whom are at least nominally required to show they have come on doctor’s orders–can choose from among 10 grades of marijuana leaf, along with capsules, tinctures and half a dozen varieties of pot-laced baked goods. A lavender haze of smoke fills the air.

“Want to get high?” a smiling volunteer staff member asked a recent visitor.

This turned-on scene may not be what Californians envisioned when they voted last November to enact Proposition 215, legalizing the use of marijuana for medical purposes. The beneficiaries were supposed to be AIDS sufferers, people in chronic pain, cancer patients going through chemotherapy and others in medical need. But the law does not specify the medical conditions for which pot is permissible, and it requires only a doctor’s oral or written permission, not a formal prescription, to get the drug.

Many of the 20 or so pot clubs that have sprung up around the state in response to the law–places where people in need can get a steady supply of the drug–are strictly monitoring their customers. The Santa Clara County Medical Cannabis Center dispenses a pound of marijuana a week from its discreet, white-walled suite in a business complex. When one would-be customer proffered a doctor’s recommendation that he had allegedly forged, co-founder Peter Baez called the police and later went to court to help press charges.

But other clubs seem closer to head shops than hospitals. Dennis Peron, a pro-pot proselytizer who helped draft Prop 215 and runs the San Francisco Cannabis Cultivators Club, admits he sells pot for everything from premenstrual syndrome to the blues. “All use of marijuana is medical,” says Peron. “It makes you smarter. It touches the right brain and allows you to slow down, to smell the flowers. We’re living in a very stressful world. It can and should be used for anxiety and depression.”

Law-enforcement agencies are in a quandary over what to do about clubs like Peron’s. A few cities, such as Concord and Palo Alto, have instituted moratoriums on pot clubs. California attorney general Dan Lungren, a law-and-order Republican, is pursuing civil and criminal litigation against Peron’s club; he says undercover cops have bought marijuana there without a doctor’s recommendation and that videotapes have shown minors on the premises.

Federal officials are in an especially delicate position. Marijuana use, even for medical purposes, is still outlawed by the U.S. government, and Attorney General Janet Reno has vowed to continue enforcing that law. But federal officials have been reluctant to crack down on the pot clubs that were created in response to the will of California voters. In April agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration raided a Bay Area cannabis club called Flower Therapy and seized 331 marijuana plants and growing equipment, charging that the club was distributing pot in quantities larger than what was needed by its ill customers. But the raid was denounced by San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and other city officials, and U.S. Attorney Mike Yamaguchi declined to file criminal charges. “It’s maddening,” seethes a federal agent, who works just four blocks away from Peron’s Cannabis Cultivators Club. “You can see hundreds of people an hour coming out of that place. We think some of these clubs are distributing marijuana to basically anybody who walks through the door.”

Now, however, the Clinton Administration, seeking to counter Republican charges of lack of leadership on the drug issue, is looking for a way to move against the clubs. Federal sources tell TIME that the Administration may try to shut down some high-volume cannabis clubs under the seldom-invoked civil provisions of the federal Controlled Substances Act, which allows the Justice Department to ask a federal judge to halt a drug-distribution operation. The advantages of this approach are that the case is decided by a judge, not a jury, and the government need not prove the club’s proprietors acted with criminal intent. A club operator who persists in peddling pot could then face a fine or imprisonment for contempt of court.

Antidrug activists fear that pot clubs, if allowed to thrive, could open the way to further relaxation of drug policy. Steve Dnistrian of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America claims that heartrending medical stories are a being used as a smoke screen “by people whose agenda is to radically change drug policy in America.” On that point, at least, Peron seems in agreement. “This is not about marijuana as medicine,” he says. “This is a cultural war.”

–With reporting by Laird Harrison/San Francisco