Schaefer, Webster bid adieu; receive resolutions

Emboldened by a 61 percent 'No' vote by Shasta County voters squarely against Measure 19, that if passed statewide would have allowed the recreational use of marijuana in California by persons 21 and older, Anderson's City Council appeared ready Tuesday, Nov. 16, to call for a resolution that would ban outright any cultivation of medical marijuana within city limits.

The decision, reached by consensus rather than any formal action, was announced by Mayor Norma Comnick following public testimony from at least eight members of the public who spoke against those growing marijuana for medical reasons.

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Riverside County Supervisor John Benoit called Tuesday for a ban on medical-marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated areas.

Supervisors in September ordered a law drafted that would regulate where the businesses could locate. But Benoit said the county should change course.

"While our process is under way, dramatic action was taken in Los Angeles and Orange counties last week to ban medical pot shops," Benoit said. "I would suggest this board should consider following that lead rather than taking an intermediate step."

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Money seized largely from illegal pot farms cut in half the number of Mendocino County law enforcement jobs slated for elimination Tuesday. And legal marijuana gardens could help ward off future cuts to public safety.

Following a contentious daylong debate, Mendocino County supervisors voted Tuesday to reduce the number of proposed job cuts in the Sheriff's Office budget to seven from 14.

In return, Sheriff Tom Allman said he would spend an additional $257,000 of asset forfeiture funds -- money collected primarily from marijuana busts -- to offset his department's $600,000 overtime budget. The Sheriff's Office had already committed $200,000 in asset forfeiture funds to the overtime budget.

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With election results nearly completed it looks like it will be business as usual for our Berkeley, or Chico City Council members. Only Mark Sorensen was able to break through to become the second conservative on the council. Come January when Larry Wahl gives up his seat to become a county supervisor, Sorensen will find out what it is like to become the lone soldier fighting a liberal regime. Sorensen should get prepared for a bumpy road ahead but I urge him to fight on as Wahl did to try to do what is right for the full-time, property-tax-paying residents of this community.

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Dear Straight Talk: Lauren, I am curious if you had ever tackled the subject of home drug testing. A lot of parents can't imagine their teens are using drugs, but the sad fact is, many use right under their noses. Some teens use marijuana while others raid the medicine cabinets for a high (sometimes at Gramma and Grampa's house). Some parents look away preferring not to know, others believe it's a complete invasion of privacy to drug test their teen. I wonder what the young people who contribute to your column think.

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A Slew of Potential March Measures Has Even City Council Members Confused.

If Los Angeles voters find themselves confused by 10 ballot measures headed their way in the March 8 municipal election, they won't be alone.

Members of the City Council -- the group that put those measures on the ballot last week -- appeared equally perplexed at times as they attempted to vet each proposal during a series of meetings.

Buffeted by the competing wishes of special interests, the mayor and various civic leaders, council members repeatedly changed their minds on the ballot proposals, hastily rewriting some while killing others outright.

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I confess that I braced myself for the backlash from my last column, on Proposition 19, the bid to legalize marijuana that was defeated Nov. 2 by California voters. While surveying other's opinions to legalize marijuana, I found mostly respectful dialogue.

One dissident, "Always Right" writes, "Demonizing marijuana as a 'gateway drug' is humorous. And if you check with the private and public drug rehab facilities, you'll find that marijuana is way behind other drugs like heroin, meth and, the big winner, alcohol."

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Dear Straight Talk: Lauren, I am curious if you had ever tackled the subject of home drug testing. A lot of parents can't imagine their teens are using drugs, but the sad fact is, many use right under their noses. Some teens use marijuana while others raid the medicine cabinets for a high (sometimes at Gramma and Grampa's house). Some parents look away preferring not to know, others believe it's a complete invasion of privacy to drug test their teen. I wonder what the young people who contribute to your column think. -- Jeffrey Soto, TeenSaver Diagnostics, Irvine

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Even as dozens of would-be pot planters showed up at Oakland City Hall last week to apply for permits to operate city-sanctioned marijuana farms, there were signs that the trailblazing effort to redefine the reefer industry might be going up in smoke. The four available permits, going for $211,000 apiece, may not be worth the paper they're written on. For starters, City Attorney John Russo has declined to put his signature on the city ordinance that created the permits.

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Though California voters rejected the legalization of marijuana, the debate rages on. The pros and cons of this controversial subject will continue butting heads.

Dr. Bob Albo, 78, retired as an Oakland general and oncology surgeon in 2006, but he remains a consultant for the Raiders and Warriors sports franchises, and he's a professor of surgery at UC San Francisco.

As for legalizing marijuana, which is a federal offense even though smoking pot occurs in all 50 states, you can basically count Albo among the cons.

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Is there anyone who can explain to me (and thousands of others) why the federal government continues to do nothing about the "ever expanding marijuana industry in California"? And, didn't we just reject the legalization of the drug in California? Obviously, our votes mean nothing.

How can California be able to sanction marijuana farms and even issue permits to run industrial scale marijuana farms when the growers, traffickers (and even an Oakland city council member) are deliberately thumbing their noses at the federal government? They must feel very confident that they will not face federal imprisonment! But ... why? We all read about local marijuana farmers who have been arrested and face losing everything they have. Does this seem crazy to anyone but me?

It's not like we're talking about a cancer cure ... or a solution to world hunger. People forget that we're talking about another readily available mind-altering narcotic!

Joanne Crouch

Penn Valley

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I agree with John Keane's argument about legalizing hemp (Letters, Oct. 27). Farmers were allowed to grow hemp during the Civil War and World War I and II because it is valuable for making rope, paper and other products.

Dupont may have had a hand in criminalizing it but William Randolph Hearst had an even bigger hand and his motives were just as scurrilous. Someone had invented a machine to harvest hemp rapidly and economically, but Hearst had vast timber holdings which he wanted to make millions on, selling it to making newspapers and other paper products, and would not allow a cheaper and more ecological source to exist.

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LOS ANGELES - Despite Proposition 19's loss at the polls this month, marijuana-legalization advocates in California are already working on their comeback plan for 2012 and are almost giddy about their prospects.

They see the election as a trial run that could lead to a campaign with a better message, a tighter measure and more money.

Both the winning and losing sides say California's voters rejected this specific initiative but remain open to legalizing the easily obtainable drug.

The proponents have a huge head start compared with where they were two years ago. At that time, regulating and taxing marijuana was the dream of a handful of Oakland activists.

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Re: "Failure of war on drugs opens way for new strategy" by Joe Amon (Insight, Nov. 21)

The evidence supporting Amon's indictment of the "war on drugs" is valid. The prosecution and jailing of drug users does nothing to cure addiction and protect drug-user health: It further wrecks young lives, often converting drug users into more hardened criminals. Amon is right in saying we should decriminalize drug use and make treatment readily available. That is what the Portuguese are doing, and it works to reduce drug use, addiction and all related health and social pathologies.

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Thank you, Janet Napolitano.

I feel so much safer now that the Bureau Of Land Management's Critical Infrastructure Crisis Response Exercise Program is over. That recent realistic scenario of crazed pot terrorists taking over the Shasta Dam to demonstrate how efficiently federal agencies can respond to this very real possibility deserves every American's praise.

Bravo! I want to congratulate everyone involved for recognizing that pot terrorists are an immediate threat to America's national security. As we all know, pot terrorists are the No. 1 threat to this nation, thus the reason for The War on Drugs. Forget about al-Qaida. We need to address real-world things like pot terrorists boarding planes with hidden doobies or glass pipes.

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EUREKA Joey Burger was 14 when his naturalist parents moved from Santa Cruz to settle in the coastal forest of Humboldt County.

Local hippies and homesteaders welcomed the new kid in the woods. They schooled him in the regional art growing marijuana.

"It was never looked upon as a bad thing," Burger said.

Except before the fall harvests, when helicopters full of narcotics officers whipped through the sky. Neighbors rushed "to call their friends to make sure they were OK," he said.

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On Nov. 2, Inland Empire voters sent a very strong message to those who support the recreational use of marijuana.

Legalizing marijuana endangers our children, our roads, and our financial stability. The proponents have vowed to bring this back again and again until they get what they want. I encourage our electorate to stay informed and continue the message they just sent them - not here, not now, not ever.

Proposition 19 would have legalized possession of less than one ounce of marijuana for anyone 21 years old or older. It would have allowed the same people to cultivate up to 25 square feet of marijuana. The state election results show it was rejected by nearly a 10 percent margin; 54 percent to 46 percent. However, the voters in the Inland Empire were more determined to reject this proposition. San Bernardino County rejected Proposition 19 59 percent to 41 percent and Riverside County rejected it 58 percent to 42 percent.

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DEPENDING ON how you look at it, the Corte Madera Town Council has either taken its sweet time or hurried its approval of an emergency moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries.

Several Marin towns approved such moratoriums or bans years ago after California voters approved the 1996 Compassionate Use Act.

Last week, Corte Madera joined them. The council emerged from a closed-door meeting with its town attorney and passed an urgency ordinance that creates a 45-day ban on new medical pot shops.

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RED BLUFF -A well-known Red Bluff man and his son-in-law arrested on pot charges last year will have to wait two more weeks before entering a plea after their court hearing was continued Monday.

Joseph Daily Froome, 48, and his 27-year-old son-in-law, Daniel Miguel Ludwig, were supposed to be arraigned Monday in Tehama County Superior Court on charges of cultivating marijuana and possession of marijuana for sale.

Froome is also charged with eight counts of money laundering.

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Medical marijuana dispensaries and marijuana delivery services should be banned along with the sale and distribution of marijuana within unincorporated Orange County, according to a county staff recommendation to the Board of Supervisors.

The recommendation, which would impose a $1,000 fine per day for violations, is up for consideration at today's board meeting.

Orange County does not have any laws regulating the permitting or establishment of medical marijuana collectives. The California attorney general set up guidelines that require dispensaries to register as nonprofits, obtain a seller's permit and supply security, among other conditions.

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