High time to legalize weed


Thursday, July 25, 2013

It’s high time marijuana is legalized


By Kelvin Wade
From page A11 | July 25, 2013 | 5 Comments

The Solano County Board of Supervisors will conduct public hearings at 2 p.m. Tuesday on a proposed ordinance to prohibit medical marijuana dispensaries in the unincorporated areas of the county. I suspect it’s a mere formality before they slam the door on medical marijuana.

I think it’s obvious that the country is slowly moving toward legalization.

This week, the California Democratic Party released a resolution calling on President Barack Obama to end the federal crackdown on marijuana. They note that we spend $20 billion on enforcement. The results are thousands of arrests and thousands dead from battles among Mexican drug smuggling cartels. In addition, The New York Times reported last month that federal data shows racial bias when it comes to marijuana arrests with blacks four times as likely to be arrested as whites and much more likely to be imprisoned.

Meanwhile 17 other states have followed California’s lead and voted for medical marijuana. Two states, Washington and Colorado, have legalized marijuana for recreational use.

A Field Poll earlier this year in California showed the majority of residents support recreational marijuana legalization with regulations similar to alcohol.

Here in Solano County, it would be easy to dismiss the supervisors who are planning to implement this ban as out-of-step squares, but California’s medical marijuana law is messy. Despite being the first state to legalize medical marijuana, we’re also the only state never to pass a regulatory framework to implement it. The vagueness of Proposition 215 and Senate Bill 420, the Medical Marijuana Program Act, has left counties and cities unsure of how to proceed. They feel trapped between federal and state law.

Still, prohibiting dispensaries isn’t going to make marijuana disappear in Solano County. Those who suffer from nausea and poor appetites from cancer treatments, AIDS, glaucoma and sobriety who can’t venture elsewhere to get their weed will just make clandestine buys locally.

Ironically, drug dealers want the supervisors to ban dispensaries. The people operating that grow house in your neighborhood that you and the police are unaware of certainly don’t want to see more marijuana dispensaries in the county. The people selling out of local motels, cars and parks don’t want a dispensary to open. Like any small business, why would they want that competition?

One of the concerns is the possibility that dispensaries would cause crime. It’s debatable. But at least having a dispensary keeps it from being underground with the accompanying turf battles. Also, if law enforcement were better educated on California law they wouldn’t make costly mistakes like Vallejo police did when they raided dispensaries, got sued and ended up having to return the plants earlier this year.

Since the federal crackdown and cities and counties enacting bans on dispensaries, the number of medical marijuana dispensaries has shrunk significantly in California. All it’s really done is deprive municipalities of tax revenue and sent cultivation and sales underground. Prohibiting facilities that would operate in the open will encourage more lawbreaking, not less.

We proved Prohibition didn’t work 80 years ago and we prove marijuana prohibition doesn’t work on a daily basis.

When will the politicians on all levels catch up to the public? Peace.

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