A cultural earthquake doesn't rumble like the Big One, but it's easy to recognize the aftershocks.
What are the signs?
How about a medical marijuana defense lawyer from liberal, pot-friendly Oakland expressing his "sincere gratitude" to the conservative city of Redding for its thoughtful new ordinance?
How about the police chief of that same conservative city likening marijuana co-ops - which until this year barely dared operate openly - to pawn shops or card rooms?
Some critics among medical marijuana users and advocates knock the city's newly approved regulations, quibbling with the details. They're too restrictive as to location. They don't allow the sale of young starter plants or "clones." They're too intrusive, violating patients' right to privacy.
While arguing over the trees, it's easy to miss the fact that we've wandered into an entirely new forest.
James M. Silva, the Oakland lawyer, drew the key distinction while speaking to the council Tuesday night. He was "encouraged," he said, that the city's approach to medical marijuana focused on regulation instead of enforcement.
In other words, the city's thinking about zoning codes instead of criminal crackdowns. On at least one front, the war on drugs has been reduced to an argument over planning, as normal as a neighborhood dispute over the height of a fence or a barking dog.
At the same meeting, Redding police Chief Peter Hansen echoed the sentiment in his own way. Faced with complaints that the local head of law enforcement was the wrong person to be in charge of licensing co-ops, Hansen replied that, first of all, the Police Department had built up a lot of experience about just what is legal when it comes to medical marijuana. He added that the department had fine working relationships with local pawn brokers and the poker club - legal businesses that can touch the margins of the criminal world - and he didn't see much difference with a medical marijuana collective.
It's been 13 years since Californians voted to allow the medicinal use of marijuana, and we're still sorting out just how to live with it.
More and more, though, it just looks ... ordinary. And that's the most extraordinary change of all.
News Hawk- Ganjarden 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: Record Searchlight
Contact: Record Searchlight
Copyright: 2009 The E.W. Scripps Co.
Website: City Rules Bring Medical Pot Into The Mainstream
What are the signs?
How about a medical marijuana defense lawyer from liberal, pot-friendly Oakland expressing his "sincere gratitude" to the conservative city of Redding for its thoughtful new ordinance?
How about the police chief of that same conservative city likening marijuana co-ops - which until this year barely dared operate openly - to pawn shops or card rooms?
Some critics among medical marijuana users and advocates knock the city's newly approved regulations, quibbling with the details. They're too restrictive as to location. They don't allow the sale of young starter plants or "clones." They're too intrusive, violating patients' right to privacy.
While arguing over the trees, it's easy to miss the fact that we've wandered into an entirely new forest.
James M. Silva, the Oakland lawyer, drew the key distinction while speaking to the council Tuesday night. He was "encouraged," he said, that the city's approach to medical marijuana focused on regulation instead of enforcement.
In other words, the city's thinking about zoning codes instead of criminal crackdowns. On at least one front, the war on drugs has been reduced to an argument over planning, as normal as a neighborhood dispute over the height of a fence or a barking dog.
At the same meeting, Redding police Chief Peter Hansen echoed the sentiment in his own way. Faced with complaints that the local head of law enforcement was the wrong person to be in charge of licensing co-ops, Hansen replied that, first of all, the Police Department had built up a lot of experience about just what is legal when it comes to medical marijuana. He added that the department had fine working relationships with local pawn brokers and the poker club - legal businesses that can touch the margins of the criminal world - and he didn't see much difference with a medical marijuana collective.
It's been 13 years since Californians voted to allow the medicinal use of marijuana, and we're still sorting out just how to live with it.
More and more, though, it just looks ... ordinary. And that's the most extraordinary change of all.
News Hawk- Ganjarden 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: Record Searchlight
Contact: Record Searchlight
Copyright: 2009 The E.W. Scripps Co.
Website: City Rules Bring Medical Pot Into The Mainstream
