Pubdate: Wed, 18 Mar 2015
Source: Press-Enterprise (Riverside, CA)
Copyright: 2015 The Press-Enterprise Company
Contact: http://www.pe.com/localnews/opinion/letters_form.html
Website: http://www.pe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/830
Author: Ben Boychuk

WAR OF WORDS OVER MEDICAL MARIJUANA

The city of Riverside's medical marijuana initiative will enrich 
shady criminal pot peddlers at the expense of public safety and kids. 
Or the June 2 ballot measure will bring much-needed regulation to 
some businesses that have been operating in a legal gray area for years.

It really just depends on whom you ask.

Language is everything. Turns out, Riverside residents don't object 
to legalization in theory. But when confronted with specific policy 
proposals, voters start getting a bit skittish.

Measure A, backed by the Riverside chapter of a national advocacy 
group called Americans for Safe Access, would undo the city's ban on 
pot dispensaries and impose certain licensing and security 
requirements, as well as criminal background checks, on dispensary 
owners. The measure would also bar a dispensary from opening within 
1,000 feet of a school, residential neighborhood or park.

City officials greatly dislike medical marijuana dispensaries and 
dislike Measure A even more. The city's official ballot argument 
against the initiative is a forceful indictment. It would make mobile 
marijuana deliveries legal, "increasing the likelihood that drugs end 
up in the hands of our children." Furthermore, the city posits that 
the 1,000-foot barrier is more of a bug than a feature because that 
distance is "just a few blocks away."

Pretty persuasive, no? The measure's proponents seem to think so. 
Jason Thompson, the attorney who fought the city last year when it 
tried to block the measure from appearing on the ballot, on Monday 
filed an emergency writ in Riverside County Superior Court asking a 
judge to strike several words and phrases from the city's ballot 
argument against Measure A.

"The judicially noticeable evidence annexed hereto provides clear and 
convincing proof that the language in question is false and 
deceptive, thereby warranting issuance of the relief prayed for 
herein," the petition reads.

When I spoke with Thompson last week, he didn't couch his complaints 
in such staid legalese. "Their ballot argument is full of lies and 
glaring misrepresentations," he told me.

"They say the measure was drafted by dispensary owners," Thompson 
said. "No, it was drafted by me." In fact, Thompson has written 
similar ballot measures for South El Monte and Yucca Valley, where 
residents will also vote June 2.

"They say the measure puts profits before the community," he 
continued. "No, state law says all dispensaries must be nonprofit." 
That one may be true, technically speaking. In reality, California's 
medical marijuana industry isn't charity; it's a nearly $1 billion 
business. Somebody is making money somewhere.

Thompson also objects to the city's contention that Measure A 
requires neither criminal background checks for dispensary owners nor 
security cameras accessible to the Riverside Police Department. That 
simply isn't true, he says. The initiative's language specifies that 
dispensaries must cooperate with police investigations.

Maybe above all, Thompson dislikes the city's general tactics in 
opposing Measure A. "It's an emotional issue for a lot of people," 
Thompson told me. "People want to have an honest conversation." The 
city attorney was evaluating Thompson's writ and had no comment Tuesday.

"'Medical' is a pretext," Thompson told me. "If the city wants 
dispensaries closed, fine. But people aren't smoking any less marijuana."

He's right. Although Californians in 1996 passed the Compassionate 
Use Act in the belief it would help ease the suffering of terminally 
ill patients, it wasn't long before patients were obtaining the pot 
cure for all manner of maladies real and imagined. As comedian Seth 
Rogen once joked, he got his prescription for a specific ailment: 
"It's called 'I ain't got no weed on me right now.'"

The truth is, the moment the feds decided not to crush state medical 
marijuana laws in their infancy, the legalization debate was 
effectively over. Congress eliminated funding for enforcement last 
year, and is now considering legislation to legalize medicinal 
marijuana nationwide.

It's true that California's Supreme Court handed Riverside a nominal 
victory in 2013 when the justices ruled that cities have the power to 
ban medical marijuana dispensaries. But the judges acknowledged 
theirs would not be the last word: "nothing prevents future efforts 
by the Legislature, or by the People, to adopt a different approach."

On June 2, Riverside voters will have the opportunity to adopt a much 
different approach  assuming they can discern the facts from the arguments.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom