It's not surprising that businesses and their employees are in a bit of a haze over recent legislative and voter-approved moves to legalize marijuana use. About 20 states, including California, have legalized the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. And in 2012, voters in Colorado and Washington went a step further by legalizing "recreational" use, as well. These actions place states in conflict with federal laws, which still regard marijuana as an illegal drug. They also created confusion in the workplace, including in Kern County. [continues 535 words]
A judge's decision to strike down Kern County's medical marijuana dispensary law may generate more litigation than it settled. Now that voter-approved Measure G has been invalidated, county officials are likely to start trying to shut down the handful of collectives and cooperatives operating in unincorporated Kern. The Bakersfield City Council approved a ban on medical marijuana dispensaries in the city last summer. The group Concerned Citizens of Bakersfield sued the city July 29 -- days before the ordinance took effect -- alleging it violated the California Environmental Quality Act by not doing an environmental review before adopting the ordinance. [continues 991 words]
Kern County's battle with medical marijuana collectives and cooperatives took a wild turn Friday. Superior Court Judge Kenneth Twisselman invalidated Measure G -- the 2012 voter-approved ordinance that limits where storefront marijuana operations in unincorporated Kern County can locate. But county lawyers said that actually clears the way for Kern to eliminate all storefront marijuana shops in its jurisdiction, setting up what will likely be another round of conflict between the county and collectives over how medical marijuana patients obtain the drug. [continues 671 words]
Opponents of Bakersfield's new ordinance banning medical marijuana dispensaries within city limits failed Monday in their attempt to force a referendum on the issue. The Bakersfield City Council approved the ordinance at its June 26 meeting and it will take effect Thursday. Financed by a political action committee calling itself Patients for Compassionate Use Policies, organizers had until 5 p.m. Monday to collect at least 15,326 signatures from registered Bakersfield voters and deliver them to the City Clerk's office. [continues 197 words]
After seeing the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota recently, medical marijuana patient association manager Liz Clarke said she has some insight into how the legendary Native American warrior felt about big government. "I don't trust," said Clarke, who is manager of Golden State Cooperative -- and like the city's 23 other dispensaries and associations, works for a business that again was outlawed on Wednesday, when Bakersfield City Council approved an ordinance banning dispensaries. The ordinance updates the city's 2004 resolution on the same topic. It declares dispensaries -- and, by extension, patient associations and any "facility or location where marijuana is made available for medical purposes ... " -- to be "specifically prohibited." While it will not take effect for 30 days, Clark and other dispensary owners say they're feeling very uneasy about how it will be enforced. [continues 850 words]
The Bakersfield City Council on Wednesday approved an ordinance banning medical marijuana dispensaries within city limits, following testimony from three residents in favor of, and four residents against the ban. The ordinance, which will take effect in approximately 30 days, is modeled after a similar example in Riverside, which recently was upheld in a decision by the California Supreme Court allowing cities to ban dispensaries. City Attorney Ginny Gennaro has been adamant that Bakersfield's ordinance, which should be in place by late July, will not result in the overnight shuttering of dispensaries. Rather, it will prohibit their operation in all zones of the city -- from residential to commercial. [continues 561 words]
The Bakersfield City Council heard heartfelt testimony from proponents of medical marijuana following the first reading at its Wednesday meeting of a proposed ordinance banning medical marijuana dispensaries. "This is really a continuation of some historic direction by the council," said Bakersfield City Attorney Ginny Gennaro. "In the clearest and simplest form, you are simply taking your resolution from 2004 and codifying it into an ordinance. It will give you, it will give us, the city attorney, your police department, an additional enforcement tool that has been endorsed by the California Supreme Court. [continues 402 words]
Bakersfield City Council member Terry Maxwell on Wednesday called for City Attorney Ginny Gennaro to draft an ordinance banning medical marijuana shops in the city. Medical marijuana advocates and opponents made conflicting appeals to the Bakersfield City Council Wednesday night. The city, by council resolution, banned storefront cooperatives and collectives years ago, but there has been no concentrated enforcement. A recent California Supreme Court decision, upholding the right of cities and counties to ban the shops, has brought the issue back to the forefront. [continues 154 words]
Monday's ruling by the California Supreme Court that essentially authorizes cities and counties to decide individually whether they will allow marijuana dispensaries to operate in their jurisdictions makes good sense. Local governments ought to be able to determine whether marijuana dispensaries are a good fit for their particular community standards and, if so, under what circumstances. The question that should influence these local decisions -- which would be enforced through zoning restrictions -- is whether dispensaries are catering to the needs of patients with valid, diagnosed medical needs or are simply retail outlets for recreational users happy to score their weed as easily as they might buy a pack of cigarettes. Dispensaries certainly often give the outward impression that they cater primarily to the latter group, with locked doors, drawn shades and furtive customer behavior. [continues 367 words]
The state supreme court ruling on medical marijuana dispensaries was not a defeat for the pot shop movement, a leading attorney said here Monday, but a setback. Phil Ganong, an attorney representing several medical marijuana collectives in Kern County, said the ruling does not invalidate his pending cases against a law passed by voters in 2012. In opposing the ordinance, the collectives argued that two state laws that permit the ownership and use of medical marijuana trumped any local restrictions or bans on storefront operations. [continues 440 words]
Whoa there, sugarfoot, not so fast on the marijuana thing. In the rush to legalize pot we may be overlooking some important (and risky) things about it: that one of its properties is that it's an hallucinogen capable of producing sudden and randomly occurring flashbacks (more on that below); and that it can have scrambling and stunting effects on a developing brain. Some background. Pot now is 1,300 percent more potent than in the 1960s and '70s. Through selective cross-fertilizing enhanced strain with enhanced strain, pot today is turbo-charged. Weed back in the Age of Aquarius was weak to the point where users had a hard time separating out the effect of inhalation hyperventilation from the THC effect of pot itself (THC is the psychoactive substance in the mix of combustion chemicals inhaled). Even then users got wasted and whacked out doing strange and dangerous things. [continues 577 words]
How many times do we have to just say NO before the pot interests get the message? I think they keep forgetting. So let's say it one more time: "No." Our voice as a community has been clear. This time it was 69 percent to 31 percent. The accommodations afforded under Measure G are good enough. We don't want to indulge the marijuana industry further. Why should we? The California law that legitimizes dispensaries and allows state residents to produce and possess pot for personal -- supposedly medicinal -- use does not compel communities to complaisantly implement those policies. [continues 614 words]
It was with sadness that I watched the majority of Kern County voters be duped into voting for Measure G by the same supervisors who voted themselves a pay raise. This measure will eliminate approximately 500 jobs and quite a bit of tax revenue. Can we really afford to lose either in this economy? I think not. I think the tax revenue from medical marijuana dispensaries would have gone a long way toward paying the supervisors their self-voted pay raises. (It must be nice to be able to vote yourself more pay.) [continues 165 words]
I was reading through my voter information booklet recently, and I got to county Measure G. It seemed like a list of reasonable, somewhat boring regulations on medical marijuana dispensaries. And then I came across this: "No edible products containing marijuana shall be distributed or sold on the premises of any medical marijuana dispensary." Umm -- may I ask why? Marijuana smoke contains more carcinogens than tobacco smoke. Yet Measure G forbids those with a legitimate medical need for marijuana from purchasing it in edible form in Kern County. It only allows for the sale of marijuana in smokable form. It seems obvious that this is a bad idea. People who use medicinal marijuana suffer enough as it is. Do they really have to risk developing respiratory problems, or possibly even cancer, too? [continues 67 words]
Now that supposed terrorists can be detained indefinitely, why are we not treating vicious street-gang members as terrorists? These thugs are terrorizing the whole country. They are kicking in the doors of innocent people, holding them at gunpoint as they ravage their homes for what little they have, traumatizing children and adults alike. They strike at the elderly, knowing their victims cannot defend themselves. As you know, an innocent little 2-year-old was killed playing in her own yard recently when a gunfight broke out on her street. She was the only casualty. How sad is that? [continues 58 words]
Measure G is exactly what Kern County needs to help the federal government effectively clear out and clean up the federally illegal and unhealthy drug haze hovering over our county, which, under the misguided and misinformed guise of voter-approved state law, has so carelessly been dispersed throughout our cities by the medical marijuana dispensaries and collectives ever since the first medicinal pot store opened here nine years ago. California's four top U.S. attorneys have rightly come to the conclusion that medical marijuana dispensaries and collectives are actually just illegal drug dealerships operating under federal radar. The Justice Department is now taking the steps necessary to quash these illegal businesses. [continues 139 words]
Carlos Fuentes died recently. He was an internationally respected Mexican author, essayist and diplomat who impressed me with his ability to think outside the box. One example occurred during a discussion about drug violence in Mexico. He placed a great deal of the responsibility for this on the United States because of its appetite for drugs and its supplying of weapons to cartels. One of his solutions was to legalize drugs. He had gone so far as to form a group of Latin American intellectuals and politicians to promote this idea. When I asked, "Why?," he said, "In 1933, your president, Franklin Roosevelt, repealed Prohibition. You now have a few more drunks, but no more Al Capones." [continues 146 words]
I disagree with Lisa Green's May 3 op-ed article, "Reducing drug penalties isn't worth the risk to public safety," which criticized The Californian's April 29 editorial "Prison reforms require smart choices." The same day Green's article appeared, The Californian published a news story titled "Former Mexican president Fox calls drug war 'useless.'" In the May 2 letter "Pot laws no deterrent," Robert Sharp of Common Sense for Drug Policy wrote that "jail cells are inappropriate as health interventions and ineffective as deterrents." [continues 185 words]
California voters approved Proposition 215 in 1996, giving "seriously ill Californians ... the right to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes" as recommended by a physician. The practical implementation of Prop. 215 has been messy, contradictory and confusing, and it conflicts with federal law. Subsequent state regulations on the issue have tempered one problem while creating others. And local governments have passed a patchwork of regulations -- and faced ensuing court battles over their legality. Measure G is Kern County's latest attempt to regulate medicinal marijuana in unincorporated areas. [continues 464 words]
If health outcomes determined drug laws instead of cultural norms, marijuana would be fully legal and there would be no medical marijuana debate ("Regulate medical cannabis at state level," April 21). Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown to cause an overdose death, nor does it share the addictive properties of tobacco. Marijuana can be harmful, but jail cells are inappropriate as health interventions and ineffective as deterrents. The first marijuana laws were enacted in response to Mexican migration during the early 1900s, despite opposition from the American Medical Association. Dire warnings that marijuana inspires homicidal rages have been counterproductive. [continues 120 words]
