He modeled the club on the Cannabis Buyers Club in San Francisco, which he said had more than 4,000 members.

But the Washington and San Francisco groups have stationery identifying them as the Cannabis Buyers' Club, and the Washington group also receives mail at a post office box.

In late 1995 and early 1996, Dennis Peron, founder of the Cannabis Buyers' Club in San Francisco, gave California voters Proposition 215, a statewide initiative to make cannabis legal as medicine.

Founder and director of the Cannabis Buyers' Club Marin in Fairfax, California, licensed since 1997.

An arthritic, HIV-positive cabaret performer, he was speaking literally, of physical pain, and speaking for most of the nearly 8,000 members of the Cannabis Buyers' Club of San Francisco.

The Cannabis Buyers' Club here was founded more than two years ago, but since moving into its rented five-story office space last fall, membership has ballooned to the current 7,800 members, Mr. Peron said.

The police grit their teeth, complaining that many of the members are not really sick, but the Cannabis Buyers' Club remains untouched.

Certainly, the clients at the Cannabis Buyers' Club are convinced.

The authorities did not immediately shut down the operation, the Cannabis Buyers' Club of San Francisco, a five-story outlet on Market Street near City Hall.

In contrast to the Cannabis Buyers Club a CSC are not limited to medical-only use.