v/o: It's no surprise the ballot initiative to legalise marijuana for medical use came from here. Or that 70 percent of San Francisco's voters supported it.

Singer

v/o: The new law makes it legal to possess smoke and even grow marijuana in California if you have a doctor's recommendation.

Man: I like to be able to come out here and play but I have chronic back pain. Marijuana relieves that. My doctor says no problem. As long as you can secure it, go for it. And that's what my doctor says so we're just waiting for the rest of America to catch up.

O'Brien: Clinically I've seen very good uses for medical marijuana in certain people. Mainly for the relief of nausea and appetite stimulation when other medications fail. I also occasionally use it for abjuctive pain relief. Or for people with paralysis and spasm of their legs.

Du Pont: This is just a sham, a fraud. They are pretending that the issue is medical and they are pretending that the issue is compassion but what it really is, is dope. They want to smoke dope and they want to have a licence to do it.

Man: How certain before we open the doors.

Loudspeaker: Go ahead and open.

v/o: These people do have a licence to smoke dope.

Man: I'm here to get my card.

Man: Okay can you go to the counter?

Doorman: Every person has to show me either a card of membership, a picture ID and a doctor's note before they can enter here. Before that, those stages are completed and nobody can purchase, nobody can come in here off the street.

It is completely done by talking to the doctors themselves, then verifying and then they become a member, then they can come up in and we'll serve them their medicine.

Man: Here you go bro.

Man: Thank you very much.

v/o: Well, sell them their medicine actually. Here you can buy marijuana of many differing strengths and grades - most of it purchased wholesale on the black market and resold legally.

Salesman: Mexican weed five dollars, it's fifteen dollars a ... , you want Double A or Single A?

Man: What's the difference in the single and a double?

Salesman: If I was getting $15 worth, I'd get the Single because you get a little more.

Man: Thank you.

v/o: The San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Co-operative looks much more like a cafe than a clinic. It opens twice a day for two hour sessions like this.

Man: Good ol' marijuana here.

Music

Man: Pure THC produces really extraordinary hallucinations which you know, people that are dying, that's a good pain killer I think.

Man: My medicine!

v/o: Widespread coverage of these joyful binges has horrified prohibitionists who are still trying to come to terms with the new law.

Du Pont: They flew under the flag of compassion. Bad guys like me, prohibitionists are depriving them of the medicines that will make them more comfortable in their final moments on this earth. Well, of course, that argument has nothing to do with what happened in California.

You go to the buyers clubs, it's not full of people who are at death's door.

v/o: Perhaps not at death's door but whether for therapeutic or social reasons there were a lot of people here suffering from serious illnesses.

Sick man: Yeah, I have hypertension, sever manic depression, HIV Positive. I really didn't want to say that. You know, and it helps for all these things - manic depression especially.

Jones: Are you here to get some marijuana?

Woman: Yes I am.

Jones: What do you do with it?

Woman: I smoke it, some I cook with it.

Jones: What does it do for you?

Woman: I have arthritis all here ...

Jones: Why do you have the oxygen?

Woman: I have emphysema too. And I'm manic depressive and agora phobic. All of those are covered quite a bit by pot?

Jones: It helps with all of that?

Woman: Yes.

Jones: Does it help for emphysema because ...

Woman: Well, I would be smoking cigarettes anyway.

Woman with cancer: I have so many different types of pills to take a day that make me sick. I can't keep them down so my alternative is marijuana.

Jones: What sort of cancer do you have if you don't mind my asking?

Woman with cancer: Stomach cancer.

Dennis Peron: What can I get you honey?

v/o: Dennis Peron is the founder of the co-operative. More importantly he was the co-author of Proposition 215.

It's a situation replete with irony. For the man who wrote the new law has been a marijuana dealer for 26 years for which he's been arrested 15 times and spent two years in jail.

Humorists here call him the Mother Theresa of Medical Marijuana.

Woman: Marijuana heals, right?

Peron: Heal? They always push you when they say heal, right? I was blind now I can see.

Woman: I can see, I can talk, I can hear you Father Peron, I hear you, ha ha.

Peron: You mean you were blind and deaf and now you're not, it's a miracle.

Du Pont: The scientists who are dedicated to the welfare of people with cancer or multiple sclerosis or AIDS have no interest in smoking marijuana as a medicine.

It looks to them like voodoo. No interest whatsoever. They are forced to do research on it by the political process.

Peron: And I think you have to stay very forceful about this.

v/o: Dennis Peron proved to be a master of the political process during the tough campaign for Proposition 215 last year.

Peron: We had to let them know that we will sue them if they come to bust our marijuana for medical purposes, that's being grown legally for medical purposes. We will sue. And on your press release ...

v/o: Now people from across the state come to him for advice on how to set up their own buyers clubs.
Woman: Do you have to have a doctor’s prescription? Or a recommendation or can you merely bring your diagnosis?
Peron: You bring your diagnosis for cancer and AIDs, for other ones you have to call the doctor and say I have you patient here - do you mind if they join my club?
Woman: And what if he says no?
Peron: They can’t join. They’ll have to get a new doctor.
Man: If the doctor says no - then you can’t let them in?
Peron: That’s right.
Woman: Can you go out of town and get a doctor specifically?
Peron: You can go anywhere you want, you can go to Holland if you want get a doctor.
Man: A person can come in and say if I’m stressed out and I want to smoke marijuana and if his the doctor says ‘yeah’ he can smoke it.
Peron: ‘Yeah!’ ... I got to hang now..
Man: Okay - anything the doctor will say, say ‘Yes!’

Du Pont: The image of the these people at these buyers’ clubs is not appealing is not appealing to the average person in California - I do not believe - they had no idea that proposition 215 was the camel’s nose under the tenet for a legalisation of marijuana.

Music

v/o: Marijuana was made illegal in the United States in 1937 after a national campaign that included 'Reefer Madness' the first anti-drug film of its kind.

Sync from film: And more vicious, more deadly is the menace of marijuana.



Jones: John Hudson is known as Dr. John to his patients. As one might guess he has no medical qualifications but he is an expert in the cultivation of marijuana.

Dr. John: I have to play doctor because I'm more familiar with the plant than most of the people who come in here.

Jones: He's one of the growers who intends to expand his production.

Jones: How many plants do you have here right now?

Dr. John: Oh, I'd say 350. In fact I'm probably pushing the limits so to speak according to the Federal standards but the state people will leave me alone because I'm doing it for medical purposes only.

Man taking photo: Go Granny, go, 1,2,3 .. have a little puff - I’m sure you will feel better soon.
v/o: As the debate over medical marijuana has gone national unlikely advocates of the drug like 74 year old grandmother Hazel Rogers has become an instant media celebrity.
Hazel Rogers: Last Thursday they were at my apartment for 5 hours arranging the lights and one thing and another..
Man: A beautiful likeness of Hazel.

V/o: Hazel Rogers has glaucoma for which she takes conventional medicine .. and marijuana.
Hazel Rogers: You know something. Ha, Ha.. I’m not doing this just for medical reasons. I used to drink alcohol and I liked the effects of alcohol but no more. I don’t like the effects of alcohol at all - it’s a downer. This is not a downer - this is quite, quite different. So I use it for glaucoma. I use it for the stress in my life. I’ve had breast cancer, I’ve got diabetes, arthritis, lost of stress. Arthritis has pain involved too and marijuana helps in everyway. It has improved my life about 100 % in the last three years.

v/o: This piano playing, hymn singing, dope smoking granny has helped to break some of the preconceptions about what sort of people are using marijuana for medical reasons. But opponents say the public is being hoodwinked...
Du Pont: They may be able to wheel out lots of people in wheelchairs to start with. But watch where this goes because this initiative has no restrictions on it for seriously ill people whatsoever. It can be for headaches. It can be for a teenager who’s unhappy about an examination. It could be for anything at all.

Dr. Reese Jones: Fascinating substance and it has been right from the start and one of the things that attracted many of us.

v/o: In order to stave off the impending confrontation with Californian doctors, the National Institute of Health convened an urgent meeting of medical experts in Washington.

Doctor: Young scientist here doing the best that he can not to inhale this marijuana smoke ...

v/o: The eight member panel heard presentations from scientists who had conducted past marijuana studies.

Doctor: It's profound, it's rapid, it's dose related, it's time related ...

v/o: But pro marijuana activists in the audience had already decided not to trust the panel.

Demonstrator: No doctors who support medical marijuana or who have advocated it are speaking on the panel today. Nor are any of the patients ...

Voice from stage: Hey, we're not your enemies, but this is a science meeting ...

v/o: In the end the panel of scientists decided marijuana does show promise for some medical conditions and that new studies of the drug should quickly go ahead.

Spokesperson: Today's conference is a real victory for the ...

v/o: But the demonstrators accused the institute of stalling to stop freer availability of the drug now.

Spokesperson: For years the science on medical marijuana has been ignored. Right now we've kicked open the door and scientists are beginning to grapple with this.

v/o: But in California some doctors like Steve O'Brien have decided not to wait for more studies.

O'Brien: I see only AIDS patients and my patient population is very advanced. People tend to be very very ill and marijuana tends to be very effective for certain people.

v/o: Now O'Brien has joined a group of his colleagues in a lawsuit, suing the Federal Government for it's attempts to target doctors.

O'Brien: Right after the California law was passed, the Federal Government convened a panel and came down with some very very harsh restrictions for physicians saying that if I even talk about medical marijuana in my practice they could pull my licence.

They don't want to attack the patients because that's not politically correct. They can't close down the cannabis buyers clubs because they've tried that and they've failed. And so they are going with what they think can be the best option which is attacking the physicians.

v/o: California's congress is in the state capital, Sacramento.

Peron’s Cohort: People come from all over the world. You can go on a cruise trip in the Mediterranean and a doctor can prescribe you know, basic medications and nobody asks any questions and you do it right in a bar.

v/o: Dennis Peron and his cohorts have come here today as lobbyists but not without a strong dose of medical marijuana.

Coughs - Peron’s Cohort: Now you can see why we need to smoke pot when we come here to lobby... Look an orange tree..

v/o: They want the politicians to stop state funding for the marijuana eradication program. To force the police to leave growers alone.

SYNC: Think about it - that is a 20 foot door.
Cohort: Solid redwood hewn planks.
Peron: What a door, huh.
Du Pont: From my point of view it'd be great for marijuana to cease to be a controlled substance. Let everybody smoke it all the time, because the more that happens, the more there would be a social reaction to it.

That would end the argument. All these people have to do is win for me to win. The more I win and keep them at bay they keep going. I'm interested in their winning. Go for it, everybody in California smoke dope and watch what happens.

Man: Since we are doing the Senate, maybe we should do Senator John Baskin Selles now.

v/o: So much has changed in California since Proposition 215 that the old drug dealer Dennis Peron can now command an audience with the wheelers and dealers in Congress.

Peron: Jesse is going to carry on our work in San José.

Man: Good.

Peron: You know, clubs ...

v/o: Almost single handedly, Peron has put marijuana on the political front burner.

Peron: I'll take a look at it.
V/o: His opponents say he’s exploiting the medical loophole to bring about full legalisation.
Peron: In fact marijuana is a very mild drug and they are thinking that it is something else - by going on that premise they know what’s best for you.

v/o: Dennis Peron's main agenda is to see all marijuana laws go up in smoke but it's unlikely that mainstream America is ready for that.

Peron: Well, I think there’s a lot of hypocrisy. I think we’ve gotta go outside and smoke a fatty..
Cohort: Brilliant.
Peron: Sounding like a good idea?
Cohort: Consensus.
Cohort: Then we will come back and do some more lobbying.
Peron: A lot of hypocrisy, let’s go on..
v/o: But it’s unlikely mainstream America is ready for that..