Pubdate: Wed, 26 May 2004 Source: Anderson Valley Advertiser (CA) Column: Cannabinotes Copyright: 2004 Anderson Valley Advertiser Contact: http://www.theava.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2667 Author: Fred Gardner Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment) OAKSTERDAM COUNTDOWN Any day now the Oakland city manager will announce which four of the eight (or nine) downtown cannabis dispensaries are "legal." The other operations will have to move, or close down, or be closed down by the sheriff, or somehow challenge the legality of the recently passed ordinance limiting the number of clubs. It was left up to Assistant City Manager Larry Carroll to decide which dispensaries best serve Oakland's interests. Carroll has toured the clubs and gotten input from the Fire Dept. and other relevant agencies. He doesn't have an enviable task. All the dispensaries represent somebody's risk, sweat, labor, and capital (not to mention hopes and dreams). C-Notes fears for the Lemon Drop, a pleasant Telegraph Ave. ice-cream parlor and coffee bar that's patronized by city workers at lunchtime and has a dispensary downstairs with some first-rate paintings on the walls and a floor of one-inch hexagonal tile. (It used to be the ladies' room in the basement of a Montgomery Ward department store.) The Lemon Drop has a "disabilities issue"-the staircase connecting cafZ and dispensary. Owner Mark Belote also worries that the county department of public health might not favor "dispensary" status for an establishment that serves food (which would also rule out the popular Bulldog, on Broadway). Belote, a sophisticated, middle-aged gent who used to be the butler at Bill Graham's Mill Valley estate, says he can't make the requisite renovations without assurance that the city will let him stay in business. And he hopes the health officials will recognize that his dispensary and his cafZ are separate operations in physically separate areas. "I'm the only independent," he says hopefully. "Everybody else has at least one other location..." The biggest and most successful dispensary in Oakland, known as The Third Floor, is financed by a businessman who never feigned an affinity for marijuana. In the past two years Mr. Big -who made his original stake running gambling houses-has opened dispensaries in San Francisco, West Hollywood, and Ukiah. Almost as a function of market dynamics, he has become a de facto wholesaler. Growers want to deal with the minimum number of clubs/buyers. They offer a price break to dispensary operators buying large quantities. Those buying large quantities don't always need that much, and re-sell to other clubs. Next thing you know, you're Mr. Big. Some "movement" activists have long expressed concern that Mr. Big would draw the heat Last week KTVU's hidden cameras focused on youths emerging from the Third Floor with large paper bags -obviously containing cuttings in 4" or 1-gallon pots-while a breathless narrator asserted, as if it were a fact, that the cannabis clubs in Oakland would sell you as much marijuana as you could carry away. The implication was that the bags contained lbs. An OPD lieutenant named Paulson was shown expressing outrage as he viewed KTVU's hidden-camera footage on a monitor. (Is there a more drab clichZ of 'gotcha' journalism?). "Look, he's coming out of the club... His partners are going to the car!..." The camera lingered on a black working man in a battered old heap carefully examining a baggie of herb that probably cost all his discretionary income for the month. Cut to Police Chief Richard Word viewing the tape and expressing maximum outrage. "They should both go to jail!" And "Those people are in for a rude awakening..." Sometimes the best we can hope for from our politicians is that they be lying. Like Kerry saying "We must stay the course" in Iraq. PS 5/28 And the winners are: The Bulldog (1739 Broadway), CARE (19th & Telegraph), Compassionate Cariegvers (better known as The Third Floor, 1714 Telegraph), and Oakland Compassionate Healing (578 W. Grand). NIDA Wants You! An experienced, successful Mendocino cannabis cultivator was delighted to read on Craig's List that the U.S. government is seeking to hire someone capable of "Production, Analysis, and Distribution of Cannabis and Marijuana Cigarettes." Understandably reluctant to forward his resume to the contracting office (the National Institute on Drug Abuse), the cultivator asked C-Notes to make further inquiries. As we suspected the "presolicitation notice" was for the contract that NIDA awards every five years to Mahmoud El Sohly, who oversees the cannabis patch at the University of Mississippi. Here's the official pitch: "NIDA is soliciting proposals from qualified organizations having the capability to grow, harvest, extract, analyze, store, prepare marijuana cigarettes and related products, extract purified delta-9-THC and other cannabinoids, work on drug development, and distribute cannabis, and marijuana cigarettes and related products to NIDA grantees and other researchers to support basic and clinical research. The offeror must possess the necessary field or growing facility, laboratory space, instrumentation and experience to conduct the work. Appropriate security approved by DEA for growing, and manufacturing of marijuana cigarettes, storage facilities and DEA Schedule I registration for Marijuana and THC are essential... "Interested organizations must submit organizational data and background, qualifications of professional personnel, and specific experience in the area of this project. It is anticipated that a five-year incrementally funded completed contract will be awarded through this procurement with optional quantities for additional growing and manufacturing. RFP [Request for Proposals] No. NO1DA-5-7746 will be available electronically on or about June 7, 2004... Responses to the RFP will be due approximately 45 calendar days thereafter." NIDA spokeswoman Jan Lipkin did not return a call in connection with this story. The "Treatment" Racket At the end of the Clinton era, the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Four Star Gen. Barry "Shoot 'Em in the Back" McCaffrey, went to work as a shill for the Phoenix House chain of "treatment facilities," founded and run by Mitchell S. Rosenthal. Dr. Rosenthal is arguably the man who, in all America, makes the most money off marijuana prohibition. Phoenix House sells "treatment" to the inexhaustible population of marijuana users who, without it, couldn't keep their jobs, or stay in school, or out of jail. Mitch passes as an intellectual but in fact he's a close personal friend of Tina Brown's. Gen. McCaffrey and Dr. Rosenthal published a self-serving op-ed piece in the Wall St. Journal May 25 that made six "recommendations to legislators now considering how best to change the [New York state drug] laws: " Reform should ensure the treatment of as many nonviolent offenders as possible. " Sentences for drug offenses should be reduced, but not to the point that they no longer provide a meaningful incentive for defendants to accept long-term residential treatment. " In-prison treatment should be mandated for offenders with a history of drug abuse who are not appropriate candidates for community-based treatment - -or are unwilling to accept it. " Although other, less restrictive treatment options may occasionally be appropriate, mandated treatment for offenders should involve no less than 12 months of residential treatment, followed by 6 months of outpatient aftercare. " Penalties for quitting treatment or failing to comply with a treatment regimen should be imposed swiftly and automatically. " Adequate levels of community-based treatment must be available statewide, and providing treatment to drug law offenders should create no additional costs for local government." May the lash be no harsher than it takes to drive customers to our door, and may the state pick up the whole tab... Liberalism in a nutshell. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom