Pubdate: Fri, 17 Apr 2009
Source: Sonoma Valley Sun (CA)
Copyright: 2009 Sonoma Valley Sun
Contact:  http://sonomasun.thmm.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4881
Bookmark: http://mapinc.org/topic/dispensaries
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

DON'T INHALE. YET.

It's not easy, being an elected official.

May look like it is from the outside, as community members generally 
get worked up only about a single issue, one which looks to them both 
urgent and simple.

But few issues are simple any longer, as one action may have 
ramifications reaching into wholly different issues. And even on a 
particular issue, there are the competing interests of government 
regulation vs. personal freedom, that is, when and how curtailing the 
free actions of individuals is in the public interest. More often 
than not, that's a difficult judgment call, and our representatives 
are quick to grasp, even if they had been aware of it intellectually, 
that, "You can't please all the people all the time."

Few issues demonstrate the truth of this observation more than the 
medical marijuana dispensary question soon to come before the Sonoma 
City Council. Readers know that we have long favored the legalization 
of marijuana, though we rush to point out that we do not endorse its 
use. We merely note that, as a society, we bear significant costs 
from the prohibition against marijuana - costs similar, as we and 
many others have pointed out, to those associated with the 
prohibition against alcohol in the 1930s. Those costs include 
criminalization of a recreational activity enjoyed by numbers of 
otherwise law-abiding citizens, involvement of an increasingly 
organized criminal element to supply demand on the black market, and 
a corrupting influence on law enforcement due to the high profits.

But the issue before the council is not legalization - that's not in 
their purview. The establishment of marijuana dispensaries, while 
certainly making pot more readily available, falls well short of 
legalization. Indeed, many of the elements from the Prohibition era 
appear, as the supply, potency and distribution of pot are still 
largely unregulated.

What will come before the council is an ordinance limiting the 
activities of businesses wanting to locate within the city limits of 
Sonoma. Readers know that, as proponents of private enterprise and 
limited government, our inclination is always to keep regulations to 
a minimum. The regulations proposed in this ordinance seem 
burdensome: limiting the businesses' inventory to whatever its 
clients can grow, outside city limits; limiting the number of people 
who can be associated with the business; limiting the number of sales 
it can make. The city doesn't regulate the number of members in a 
wine club, for instance, or how many sales a winery can make in its 
tasting room.

Of course, the council can decide to prohibit the business 
altogether, as it did with the private imaging lab that sought a 
location in Sonoma several years ago. There were other problems with 
that application, but a key factor in the denial was precluding the 
competition with Sonoma Valley Hospital. The city council considered 
the larger effect a business will have on the community and should 
consider denial in this case, too.

Pot is a multimillion-dollar industry that need not be run by 
criminals. Far better that the product be sold under license and with 
age restrictions at, say, a 7-11, rather than in the shadows by a 
dealer. The dispensary operations, while tempting as a first step in 
that direction, are not transparent enough, nor their regulation 
clear enough. With present efforts at the state and even federal 
level for true legalization, the city council should wait, in our 
view, for that better option.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom