Pubdate: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 Source: Record Searchlight (Redding, CA) Copyright: 2011 Record Searchlight Contact: http://www.redding.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/360 NASTY OUTBURSTS DO NOTHING FOR MARIJUANA CAUSE Rowdy and rude behavior at public meetings to discuss medical marijuana has become all too routine. Faced with opposing viewpoints, the Proposition 215 crowd has an ugly habit of responding with boos, catcalls and nasty interruptions. Even by those low standards of decorum, though, Tuesday's Shasta County Board of Supervisors meeting had ugly moments. The ugliest: James Benno - chief executive officer of Nor-Cal NORML, the regional chapter of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws - fired off a vulgar outburst as the supervisors began to discuss a proposed ordinance to ban marijuana dispensaries in the unincorporated county. As Chairman Les Baugh called for a deputy to restore order, Benno stormed out of the chambers, lobbing an "F bomb" at the supervisors over his shoulder on the way out. Nobody's under any obligation to be polite to their local elected officials. But when political advocates make 15-year-olds with anger-management problems look well-mannered, their cause is going to have a problem. Is it any surprise the county is pushing laws to discourage more of these folks from planting gardens and setting up shop? In fairness to the medical-marijuana advocates in the audience, several apologized to the supervisors for behavior they saw as out of line. Still, the sheer bile is hard to ignore. And for every genuinely sympathetic story of a patient with a severe illness who's found relief in marijuana, there's a grower who seems to think that the least consideration of his neighbor's rights is an affront to the Constitution. For every legitimate legal question about the confused state of California's marijuana laws, there's a Proposition 215 advocate arguing that the federal Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional (the Supreme Court says otherwise) or even unbiblical. ("And God said, Let the earth bring forth ... the herb yielding seed." No, we don't know when the Book of Genesis became the law of the land either.) The county's growing ordinance attempts to strike a balance, allowing gardens for personal use but not plantations that are effectively commercial enterprises. Its ban on dispensaries is overkill, but at least the county has been consistent, not giving collectives rein to open only to abruptly order them to shut down as Redding has. But if you can make arguments either way about the precise boundaries of the local ordinances, too many medical-marijuana proponents take the tack of irrationality and belligerence. How's that working for them? - --- MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.