Pot times July 17, 2005
Pot Shop Issue Hangs In The Air
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n1126/a02.htmlNewshawk: canorml
Pubdate: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 MEDICAL POT SHOP ISSUE HANGS IN AIR
Source: Record, The (Stockton, CA)
Copyright: 2005 The Record
Contact:
editor@recordnet.com
Website: http://www.recordnet.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/428
Author: Michael Fitzgerald
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm
(Cannabis - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm
(Decrim/Legalization)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm
(Heroin)
Is a marijuana dispensary wafting Stockton's way? The question came up this week
after the City Council voted not to extend its one-year moratorium on
medical-marijuana dispensaries. Pot stores sprouted in California in 1996
after voters approved Proposition 215, allowing seriously ill people and their
caregivers to grow and buy and ill persons to use medical marijuana.
Dozens of dispensaries sprang up in the Bay Area. Even Modesto has at
least one. But when an Acampo man wanted to open one here last year, the
council said whoa. Lifting the moratorium was not a show of support for
dispensaries. On the contrary.
It was the council's way of destroying the illusions of dispensary advocates who
hoped a studious council might emerge from an extended moratorium
pro-dispensary. "I was sort of the opinion Stockton should not hang
on to the moratorium and string these folks along," said Mayor Ed Chavez,
channeling Shakespeare, who said you must be cruel to be kind. So what
will happen if somebody now seeks to build a pot dispensary in San Joaquin
County? There's a process involving zoning and the Planning Commission.
That doesn't matter, though. Because District Attorney Jim Willett has
said dispensaries are illegal and he'll prosecute them. This brings us to
the weirdness of the medical-marijuana law. State law is usually
consistent. Not so with Proposition 215. California's cities have
broken up into medieval Italian city-states, each with its own standards for pot
cultivation and distribution. Stockton's take is that medical-marijuana
users and their caregivers should be left alone.
But dispensaries are not caregivers courts have ruled this way; they are
for-profit businesses hawking an illegal drug. The DA's position is
legally accurate. Proposition 215, for all its good intent, is seriously
flawed.
Its authors made buying pot legal but not selling it. Selling it remains
illegal. The DA, of all people, cannot be expected to rebel. But
surely if it's legal for somebody to buy medical marijuana, it should be
permissible for somebody to sell it. Change the law, Willett said.
"If that's the will of the people, then clean 215 up and legalize those
things. "Boy, I'll follow that in a heartbeat." He raises an
interesting point.
Given that Proposition 215's glaring flaws have been around since 1996,
lawmakers should have fixed them. Yet there appears to be no legislation
in the works. Somebody get Sacramento on the phone. Because Deputy
DA Phil Urie warns he may hammer dispensaries with criminal and civil actions.
"We might even go after them under the Business and Professional Code,
Section 17200: 'unfair business practices,' " Urie said. The unfair
practice is selling something illegal under federal law, Urie explained.
Ah, yes, federal law. The feds classify marijuana as a Schedule 1 killer
drug right up there with heroin. They claim marijuana has no
scientifically valid medicinal use. Never mind those buttinsky doctors.
On the subject of marijuana, the feds are the incarnation of reefer madness.
But we don't have to be. The planning commissioners and City Council
members should do their homework on this issue and not rely on overconservative
staff reports, overoptimistic marijuana lobbyists or anybody else. They
should get clear on the science -- not the law or the politics -- which suggests
marijuana is a good pain reliever, appetite stimulator and antidepressant.
They should study how dispensaries work in other cities and bone up on the
regulations necessary to keep them clean. They should develop informed
positions, pro or con, even if the district attorney exercises a sort of veto
power.
Their time to be leaders may yet come.
