By Fernando Alcantara/Garden Grove Journal
The existing conflict between California State and Federal laws regarding marijuana dispensaries continue to anger both Garden Grove residents and local officials as residents voiced their displeasure during Tuesday night’s city council meeting.
Garden Grove resident Verla Lambert blamed the city council for the rise in dispensaries due to the ban being “ineffectively enforced,” she said.
“The city council was going to limit [the number of dispensaries in the city] to 30 shops,” Lambert said. “Now, nine months later, Garden Grove has 70-plus [dispensaries].”
Maureen Blackman also questioned the rise of medical marijuana dispensaries asking why the moratorium hadn’t slowed down the rise of dispensaries.
“A few months ago, there were 45 dispensaries now there’s 73,” Blackman said. “There are now four [dispensaries] within a half mile in my neighborhood. Is there going to be a marijuana dispensary on every corner?”
Garden Grove Police Chief Kevin Raney was brought in to explain the city’s lack of crackdown on the dispensaries explaining the legal distance between State and Federal laws.
Chief Raney explained that the Federal government still holds marijuana as an illegal drug despite the allowed use of medicinal marijuana per Proposition 215 and that current dispensaries are being heavily monitored.
“The best estimate we have is that we are hovering over the 60 number [of dispensaries],” Chief Raney said.
“Basically if we try to regulate the dispensaries, then we’ve recognized them,” Council member Bruce Broadwater said. “If we recognize them, we have to give them licenses. The Federal Government heard that we were going to recognize them and said they’d sue us if we did. It’s a Catch-22.”
Mayor William Dalton encouraged residents to utilize the police department and report all illegal use of marijuana when witnessed in order to help minimize the problem while offering his opinions on the use of medical marijuana.
“I believe 90 percent of medical marijuana is garbage,” Mayor Dalton said. “It’s somebody that wants to smoke dope and does it. Unfortunately enough people are willing to hand out a piece of paper that says they need [medical marijuana].”
City council also approved a $2.5 million dollar purchase agreement for four properties on Harbor Boulevard and Thackery Drive, Tuesday night that would provide for the development of the second of a two-hotel development plan.
The successor agency had been working on acquiring these properties since 2002 for the hotels and have already built a 285-room Sheraton Hotel from this plan in 2008.
This purchase will set into motion the development of the next hotel.
The new GG police chief is Kevin Raney. He spoke last night at the city council meeting.
Perhaps the City Council might have garnered more sympathy if they had been honest about two things:
1. The City wasted a couple hundred thousand dollars a few years ago fighting a legal battle against Felix Kha, a medical marijuana patient. The city lost. The city appealed. They lost again. (I forget how many times they appealed the ruling, but they lost multiple times and wasted nearly a quarter million dollars in the process.) It is not worth it to fight against State Law on this; it’s a huge waste of taxpayer dollars in the end.
2. Marijuana is not a dangerous drug. (Not when compared to FDA approved pharmaceuticals, which kill hundreds of thousands of people every few years in the U.S.)
Don’t take my word for it; look at the findings of fact from the DEA’s own administrative law judge Francis L. Young, who in 1988 ruled that marijuana does NOT belong in Schedule I and the government must change it’s status. In her ruling she noted that while you would have to smoke or eat approx. 1,500 POUNDS of marijuana within a 15 minute time span in order to suffer a harmful toxic overdose (making marijuana literally one of the safest substances on the planet consumed by humans, with zero reported overdose deaths in thousands of years of use), at the same time, you can easily eat enough raw potatoes to suffer a harmful toxic reaction. In fact, I have enough raw potatoes in my kitchen right now to kill myself, and yet the government doesn’t feel any need to protect me from these demon vegetables. Hmmm. Very curious. Skip to the last section, pages 53 to 69 of the ruling, for the Findings of Fact after the court heard all the evidence. Of course the DEA completely ignored this ruling by their own appointed judge. http://www.druglibrary.org/olsen/MEDICAL/YOUNG/young.html
I wonder how many people claiming that most medical marijuana patients are just people who want to get stoned, I wonder how many of these folks enjoy their own altered states of consciousness by drinking alcohol, a dangerous drug that kills thousands upon thousands of people every year? Even if it was true, that most of these patients just want to get high, someone please explain to me why is one altered state of consciousness (drunkenness) perfectly OK but the other one isn’t? I’m sorry, but the whole thing (the prohibition of cannabis) is ridiculous to begin with. It is Unconstitutional at its core, another example of the Nanny State (the Federal government) deciding it knows what is best for you, instead of letting you live your life free from their interference. And they’re wasting billions of our tax dollars while doing it.