420
Founder
Even if the city of Redding orders its many medical-marijauana "co-ops" to close their doors by the end of the month, and they comply, does anyone think fewer users will be buying marijuana under the protections of Proposition 215?
Whether you sympathize with patients suffering severe health problems who find cannabis eases their pain or think that pot smokers are just scamming the system to avoid criminal prosecution, it's hard to see the business going away. Not so long as state law grants near-total criminal immunity to users and growers who can maintain even a faade of medicinal need.
But what a forced shutdown of storefronts would do is force the business out of a few commercial strips back into residential neighborhoods, city parks and the trunks of cars at mall parking lots. It would create more street drug dealers and fewer business operators with an incentive to control nuisances and keep up their reputation.
It would also poison a spirit of reasonable cooperation that the city has developed over the past two years under its licensing ordinance. Just-retired Police Chief Peter Hansen has said that most operators have worked hard to comply with the law and be good neighbors - though he credits the threat of license revocation as a vital tool for ensuring good behavior. Without that stick, he and City Attorney Rick Duvernay argue, the city has no way to control the side effects of medical-marijuana sales. The city attorney thus recommends a citywide shutdown of all co-ops and collectives, effective Dec. 1.
The city has no good options here. An October ruling by a state Court of Appeal ruled that city licensing schemes like Redding's are illegal, insofar as they authorize an activity - marijuana sales - that federal law bans without exception. That ruling is binding state law, at least this week, and the city cannot very well ignore it - even though the city of Long Beach appealed the ruling to the California Supreme Court.
But forcing an immediate closure - even though the city always said it would revoke licenses if the law made them illegal - seems a hasty overreaction. It's more likely to send medical-marijuana sales into hiding than actually reduce them. And if the city actually tries to enforce the new ordinance, it will likely provoke an expensive legal fight. The city would probably win eventually, but enforcement and litigation would also absorb scarce local resources in a battle that the Supreme Court might yet render moot.
City officials are right to fear an increase in nuisances without the police oversight that the city's licensing ordinance allowed. They should be on close watch for bad behavior and lean hard on operators who allow it.
But the city's two-year experiment with licensing has already shaken out the worst operators and created norms of good behavior that help us manage this legal gray zone, which won't go away even if a few marijuana-leaf signs in strip malls come down.
Rather than rush into a decision in a field where legal rulings change the law seemingly by the week, it seems like a time to wait and see what both less-regulated co-ops and the courts do.
Source: Source: Record Searchlight (Redding, CA)
Copyright: 2011 Record Searchlight
Contact: letters@redding.com
Website: Redding Record Searchlight: Local Redding, California News Delivered Throughout the Day.
Whether you sympathize with patients suffering severe health problems who find cannabis eases their pain or think that pot smokers are just scamming the system to avoid criminal prosecution, it's hard to see the business going away. Not so long as state law grants near-total criminal immunity to users and growers who can maintain even a faade of medicinal need.
But what a forced shutdown of storefronts would do is force the business out of a few commercial strips back into residential neighborhoods, city parks and the trunks of cars at mall parking lots. It would create more street drug dealers and fewer business operators with an incentive to control nuisances and keep up their reputation.
It would also poison a spirit of reasonable cooperation that the city has developed over the past two years under its licensing ordinance. Just-retired Police Chief Peter Hansen has said that most operators have worked hard to comply with the law and be good neighbors - though he credits the threat of license revocation as a vital tool for ensuring good behavior. Without that stick, he and City Attorney Rick Duvernay argue, the city has no way to control the side effects of medical-marijuana sales. The city attorney thus recommends a citywide shutdown of all co-ops and collectives, effective Dec. 1.
The city has no good options here. An October ruling by a state Court of Appeal ruled that city licensing schemes like Redding's are illegal, insofar as they authorize an activity - marijuana sales - that federal law bans without exception. That ruling is binding state law, at least this week, and the city cannot very well ignore it - even though the city of Long Beach appealed the ruling to the California Supreme Court.
But forcing an immediate closure - even though the city always said it would revoke licenses if the law made them illegal - seems a hasty overreaction. It's more likely to send medical-marijuana sales into hiding than actually reduce them. And if the city actually tries to enforce the new ordinance, it will likely provoke an expensive legal fight. The city would probably win eventually, but enforcement and litigation would also absorb scarce local resources in a battle that the Supreme Court might yet render moot.
City officials are right to fear an increase in nuisances without the police oversight that the city's licensing ordinance allowed. They should be on close watch for bad behavior and lean hard on operators who allow it.
But the city's two-year experiment with licensing has already shaken out the worst operators and created norms of good behavior that help us manage this legal gray zone, which won't go away even if a few marijuana-leaf signs in strip malls come down.
Rather than rush into a decision in a field where legal rulings change the law seemingly by the week, it seems like a time to wait and see what both less-regulated co-ops and the courts do.
Source: Source: Record Searchlight (Redding, CA)
Copyright: 2011 Record Searchlight
Contact: letters@redding.com
Website: Redding Record Searchlight: Local Redding, California News Delivered Throughout the Day.
