Archive

Posts Tagged ‘Compassionte Use Act’
November 24th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Regulation of California’s “Compassionte Use Act” Goes Up in Smoke in West Hollywood

Just when I begin to think that California government can’t produce a worse example of willful resistance to the rule of law, the city council of West Hollywood vies for attention. Under the terms of California’s “Compassionate Use Act” medical marijuana dispensaries are supposed to be non-profit entities supplied by legal growers for distribution to people with a qualifying medical ailment. This is how the city council of West Hollywood is choosing to implement that law.

Simply, West Hollywood has no clue if its dispensaries are buying pot from gangs, organized crime and illegal grows — or someplace else.

As West Hollywood Councilman John Duran says, “We knew from the beginning that they were operating for a profit. The greater evil was to send AIDS patients back to drug dealers and back alleys.” In fact, the West Hollywood “model” of regulation, praised days ago by city councilmen Rosendahl, Dennis Zine and Paul Koretz, is a rudimentary system of rules that require closing on time, using an unarmed security guard and not attracting loiterers. The city is not even attempting to prevent profits.

But Duran concedes a darker truth, saying, “We know that the collectives are not able to get all their marijuana from California, and some are coming from drug cartels, and the pesticides are highly toxic to AIDS patients. We did advise the dispensary that they should find marijuana that won’t be harmful to patients.” Beyond that, although having only four outlets to worry about, they simply “don’t have the expertise to figure out” where all that high-end $25-per-gram pot is coming from, Duran says.

According to the same LA Weekly article, the Los Angeles city council follows a similar program of non-compliance. Amazing.