75A - PH - MEDICAL MARIJUANA - PROHIBIT

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A modest wooden fence fronts the street and a path leads through a mulch lawn to a white security door. Beneath the rich, sloping redwood ceiling, a spacious brick. fireplace keeps patients toasty-warns in the winter. Once a week a woman comes in and provides free massages on a table in the corner. And unlike other East Bay poi clubs, most of which stress a clinical pharmacy's atmosphere, patients can sit down and light up right there, beneath rustic paintings of Jimi, Janis, and .Terry. If it weren't for the crime that has plagued his club's operation, Estes might be the patron saint of Berkeley stoners. "We have the best prices ar~d the best medicine." he boasts. "If you know buds; we l.~ave the bomb." But ever since Estes first got involved in the medical-marijuana movement, rnen with drugs, guns, and evil intent have followed. him everywhere he goes. They have robbed him, exploited his generosity, and endangered the lives of everyone around. him -- even his three children. But "Compassionate Ken, as his friends call him, doesn't seem to learn. He always picks the wrong friends. At least that's Ken.'s side of the story. His estranged. lover, Stacey Trainor, told a darker version. to the Contra Costa dishict attorney's office. She alleged that Estes is a former coke dealer who lied to secure his club's Lease, that he has a Berkeley doctor i.n his pocket who wil] sell pot prescriptions for $215 a pop, and that up to thirty percent of his customers buy his product without any medical notes at all. Police and University Avenue merchants, meanwhile, claim that high-school kids used to line up for a taste outside Estes' club, and that his security guards scared away neighborhood shoppers and even got involved. in Eghts on the street. His fellow cannabis-club operators even tried to drive Estes out of town. Whether Estes is a character out of The French Connection or one out of The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, he couldn't exist without the peculiar politics of Proposition 215, which decriminalized medical marijuana in California. In the six years since its passage, mayors, district attorneys, and state officials have been so focused on protecting patients from federal prosecution that they've neglected to implement any sort of regulations about how pot should be distributed. No state or local agency or mainstream medical group has offered any comprehensive guidelines on who should hand out pot in what manner. As a result, medical pot is not just legal, but superlegal, perhaps California's least-regulated. ingestible substance. And yet marijuana remains a powerful intoxicant with a vast underground market, one whose dealers inhabit a shadowy criminal world populated by dangerous men. In the absence of official regrzlation, it has fallen to pot- club operators themselves to craft some sort of system. Over the last six years, groups like the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative and the Alliance of Bcrk.eley Patients have, through a series of trials and sometimes embarrassing errors, arrived at a protocol for verifying medical ailments, providing security from criminals, and operating safely in quiet residential and commercial. neighborhoods. But however sensible their rules may be, they have no means of forcing club operators to abide by them. Al] they have is a gentlemen's agreement. Ken Estes broke that agreement, whether by design or neglect. And no one may have the legal power to make him stop. Estes is that rare breed of Bay Area native who spent his teenage years here i.n the '70s and didn't smoke pot. Bom in Martinez, he moved to Concord and became a star athlete at Ygnacio Val.iey High. He excelled at soccer and was offered a scholarship to Santa Clara University, but that all changed one day in 1976, a month after he graduated from high school. Estes was riding his motorcycle back from a Walnut Creek N1cDonald's, where he worked as a manager, when a car swerved into his lane and hit him head on. 42 75A-51