Pubdate: Wed, 22 Feb 2012
Source: San Diego City Beat (CA)
Copyright: 2012 San Diego City Beat
Contact:  http://www.sdcitybeat.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2764
Author: Dave Maass

DOOBIE-OUS 

Proposed local medical-marijuana initiative isn't a joint
effort

The medical-marijuana-themed hospitality suite at California's
Democratic State Convention last weekend was kicking-a DJ, movies, a
gallery show of Chicano Park artists and a flowing contingency of
prominent Democrats.

The suite was sponsored by the Patient Care Association (PCA), a
growing organization of collective and dispensary operators that
serves as a chamber of commerce for San Diego's medical-marijuana
industry. The PCA partnered with Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and the
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union to bring in
Democratic power brokers: Speaker of the Assembly John Perez made an
appearance, as did San Diego County Democratic Party Chairman Jess
Durfee and executive director Ryan Hurd. Altogether, it was a
celebration that received an unusual amount of establishment support
considering the medicalmarijuana movement's history of operating on
the fringe.

"Afterward, someone told me we've gone a long ways to making this
mainstream and acceptable," says Cynara Velazquez, a Democratic
organizer who now coordinates PCA outreach.

Through its political committee, Citizens for Patients Rights, PCA has
raised $70,000 and hired the La Jolla Group, a high-profile
petition-circulation firm, to collect the necessary 62,000 signatures
by June 20 to get new medical-marijuana regulations on the November
ballot. The initiative was recently endorsed by Rep. Bob Filner, the
only viable Democrat running in this year's San Diego mayoral race.

For all the new alliances PCA is creating, the group may find its
greatest adversaries among other medical-marijuana leaders, who've
either taken a neutral position or are outright opposed to the
proposed Compassionate Use Dispensary Restriction and Taxation Ordinance.

San Diego's medical-marijuana community has long been plagued by
warring factions and political undercutting, particularly between
groups such as San Diego Americans for Safe Access (SDASA) and the San
Diego Chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana
Laws (NORML). Personal attacks regularly fly over email and Facebook;
activists accuse each other of unprofessional conduct, harassment,
secretly working for the Drug Enforcement Agency and conspiring to
establish a medi-pot monopoly. Steve Elliott, who covers the
medical-marijuana beat nationally for Village Voice Media's Toke of
the Town blog, describes San Diego as the most contentious medical
marijuana community in the country.

"I observe the medical-marijuana scene all over, and from my
observations, San Diego is perhaps the most divisive scene in the
United States, full of bitter vendettas, tiresome one-upmanship and
counter-productive infighting," Elliott says.

The most substantial example may have been the brouhaha over an
ordinance the City Council passed last year to regulate dispensaries,
which was subsequently repealed after medical-marijuana interests
collected enough signatures for a referendum. City Council members who
were supportive of the collectives expressed shock and frustration
when the community opposed the ordinance at the 11th hour, rather than
communicating their problems with certain provisions. Instead,
patients and collectives protested the measure both in public comment
and in an attempted sit-in inside the council chambers. The council
has since washed its hands of the issue.

"We spent 2 years listening to stakeholders and creating an ordinance
that would allow access, protect neighborhoods and still get council
support," Councilmember Marti Emerald said in a prepared statement to
CityBeat. "After all that, the proponents shot down our work. Now it's
time for them go roll up their sleeves and make it happen."

PCA is the first organization to take up the challenge, emerging as a
third organization for collective operators who Velazquez says are
frustrated with factionalism. The organization introduced an 18-page
ballot initiative that would establish basic regulations for
storefront dispensaries and a 2.5-percent tax on cannabis
transactions. But the provision that spells out the
dispensary-approval process is causing the most controversy.

The initiative calls for the creation of independent "Compassionate
Use Accreditation" organizations that would certify dispensaries.
These organizations would have accreditation boards made up five
collective operators picked by the organization along with two
qualified patients and three experts appointed by the City Council.
The provision is a reaction to a recent court decision that
invalidated Long Beach's medical-marijuana ordinance on the grounds
that a city can't violate federal law. Although that decision is being
considered by the California Supreme Court, PCA believes it can work
around it by establishing these third-party accreditation bodies.

"We had to come up with an alternative method for overseeing and
licensing [dispensaries] without the city doing it directly," PCA
Chairperson James Schmachtenberger says. "Based on the history of the
city of San Diego and how much they have decided to fight back against
this issue... if there were any specific things the city had to get
involved in with overseeing and licensing, they could tie it up in
court, and that could delay the implementation of the ordinance from
months to a few years."

PCA openly acknowledges it plans to become an accreditation authority,
though, in theory, there could be more than one body. The problem,
opponents say, is that the language is written so narrowly that PCA
would be the only group allowed to do accreditation. The initiative
says an organization must have been in existence for at least a
year-and-a-half before the ordinance takes effect and have a roster of
at least 30 collective members.

From PCA's perspective, Velazquez says patients may not have the
prerequisite business knowledge to administer the permitting process,
which is why PCA decided standards should be written and administered
by responsible collective owners.

Alex Kreit, the Thomas Jefferson School of Law professor who chaired
the city's Medical Marijuana Task Force, says it's problematic for PCA
to control licensing and fees.

"I just can't, for the life of me, see how that makes sense from a
policy perspective," Kreit says. "It seems [like] something geared
towards [the dispensaries'] interests, not the interests of
medical-marijuana patients and people in the community."

Stephen Whitburn, a Democratic politician who served as the task
force's vice-chair, calls the bill "bad policy." He says it cuts
neighborhood representatives out of the process and sets unreasonable
deadlines. He's also skeptical of PCA's self-serving accreditation
concept.

"You would be concentrating in the hands of a very few people the
power to determine who could operate medical-marijuana dispensaries
and under what conditions," Whitburn says. "Any time you concentrate
power to that degree, you are inviting abuses."

SDASA has taken a neutral position on the measure, applauding the
effort while questioning the measure's legality. The group plans to
sit this one out and instead focus on passing a medi-pot initiative in
Imperial Beach. Craig Beresh, a longtime marijuana activist who
organizes the California Cannabis Coalition and San Diego NORML, is
more vocal in his opposition.

"The collective directors or owners, whatever you want to call them,
they're not fighting for patients' rights," Beresh says. "They're
fighting for profits."

Beresh worked with PCA closely to repeal the city's ordinance but
split from the partnership when PCA did not im-mediately follow up
with an initiative supported both by patients and collectives.
Velazquez says changes were made to the initial draft to address some
of the community's concerns but acknowledges that no proposal will
please everyone.

"Often times 'good' is sacrificed at the altar of 'perfection,'"
Velazquez says. "People may not like individual provisions of this
initiative, but it would guarantee safe access in San Diego and it
would guarantee that access is not monopolized in San Diego."
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MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.