I've just finished reading the latest sensational headline in the Aug. 5 Californian about a marijuana grow being taken down, with a front-page blurb noting that it was near a high school. It has been pointed out previously that these grows have high fences and are secure against outsiders getting in or even seeing what's behind the fence. Do you think the growers were standing on the corner like hot dog vendors at a ballpark, pushing their pot to the schoolkids walking by? [continues 168 words]
The Kern County Board of Supervisors is destroying local residents' rights to health-care choices. Supervisors will kill more than 300 jobs, give over $500,000 of tax revenue to crime, drive $5 million in spending underground and force 20,000 patients to back alleys. Those patients now legally get their medicinal marijuana from a lawful collective. That may change in 30 days. Lawful patient transactions turn into drug trafficking. Instead of preventing crime and protecting residents, the supervisors will spawn crime and expose patients to great risk. Why would they act irresponsibly? [continues 617 words]
Kern County supervisors took the first step toward banning the sale of medical marijuana though organized, nonprofit collectives and cooperatives in county areas Tuesday over the objections of a crowd that filled their chambers and marched down Truxtun Avenue. The Board of Supervisors could have slammed the plan into place immediately. But it chose to wait one week and take more input from staff about the impact on patients. Supervisors voted unanimously to approve a first reading of an ordinance that would create the ban on collectives, limit the number of plants that could be grown outside on a piece of property to 99 and outlaw the sale of marijuana-laced food products. [continues 459 words]
Regarding Ric Llewellyn's July 30 column, "Is pot really good for whatever ails you?": Not only should medical marijuana be made available to patients in need, but adult recreational use should be regulated. Drug policies modeled after Prohibition-era restrictions on alcohol have given rise to a youth-oriented black market. Illegal drug dealers don't ID for age, but they do recruit minors immune to adult sentences. Throwing more money at the problem is no solution. Attempting to limit the supply of illegal drugs while demand remains constant only increases the profitability of drug trafficking. For addictive drugs like heroin, a spike in street prices leads desperate addicts to increase criminal activity to feed desperate habits. The drug war doesn't fight crime, it fuels crime. [continues 69 words]
Recently I was notified that it was time for me to volunteer for jury duty. Although I have an opinion about jury duty, that's not what this column is about. It's about the abuse of the compassionate dupes who passed Proposition 215 in 1996. That's right, I want some changes made to the law that authorizes anyone in the state who has a valid doctor's note to smoke pot with impunity. I was in the pool for a jury that heard a drug case. The state charged that the defendants were growing pot for sale. The defense responded that they had medical marijuana cards. [continues 633 words]
A Superior Court judge has thrown out a criminal case against an Oildale medical marijuana cooperative that was shut down in 2009, saying the search warrant that led to the closure was based on incomplete information because it omitted a tape recording that seemed to indicate the cooperative was complying with the law. Judge Michael Dellostritto Friday called the affidavit in support of the search warrant "false and misleading," and said he never would have issued the warrant had he heard the recording. [continues 453 words]
"You want a scoop?" controversial and colorful Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., said Saturday, sitting in the lobby of Bakersfield's Doubletree Hotel. He said he has a plan to fight the Mexican thugs that are bringing violence and drugs to the United States, oftentimes the latter on the backs of illegal immigrants. Arpaio, known for setting up tent-city jails in sweltering desert heat and requiring inmates to wear pink underwear, said he'd send U.S. border patrol and military personnel into Mexico to help that country's police and Army fight the fight. It's the kind of undercover, gun-battling work he said he did as a Drug Enforcement Administration agent stationed in Argentina, Turkey and Mexico. [continues 768 words]
Well, well. I have always wondered why Zack Scrivner hates police and firefighters so much. Now we know why ("Councilman Scrivner reveals past drug arrest," Oct. 16). I'm sure at the time of his arrest on drug charges, he blamed the cops for ruining his chances, for the most part, of ever being hired as a civil servant. This must be the reason he wants to be a career politician. Who else would hire him? And now, we find out that we have a guy on the Bakersfield City Council who is using his position to get back at the cops and firefighters he hates so bad. What's really sad is that he was able to convince the other numbskulls on the council to go along with his campaign of hate. What a stinkin' joke on all of us. I hope Scrivner loses the election and goes back to driving around your neighborhood selling frozen food -- or maybe he can find a minimum-wage job that his party is trying to create more of. Derek L. Tisinger Bakersfield [end]
Mike Shaffstall Bakersfield [end]
This is in regard to Ric Llewellyn's Oct. 16 column, "Just say no to Proposition 19." We voters, when deciding whether to vote for Proposition 19, need to start at the indisputable fact that, heretofore, marijuana prohibition, in its many permutations over the decades, has been a costly, harmful and abject failure. It's true that that criminal cartels will not go away with passage of Prop. 19, but law enforcement will have more resources available to turn its attention toward more egregious enterprises, i.e., transportation of humans to become virtual slaves/prostitutes. Currently, the incarceration of marijuana violators, a simple peccadillo, is a costly burden for society to bear. [continues 140 words]
In its recent editorial on Proposition 19 ("No on Prop. 19: Pot initiative's issues too hazy," Sept. 28), The Californian was worried about the fact the taxation of cannabis wasn't written into the measure. Then, the editorial went on to say that the taxes would be too high to close the black market. So which is it? Does the proposition not implement taxes or does it implement too many taxes? Anyone who has read the proposition knows that it allows cities and counties to set regulations (including tax rates). Since when is local control a bad thing? [continues 158 words]
Proposition 19, which would essentially legalize marijuana in California, comes before the electorate at a time of economic malaise -- as a potential tool to raise state revenues and unburden California's law enforcement, court and correctional systems, thereby allowing them to focus on "serious" crimes. The initiative, known officially as the Control and Tax Cannabis Act, would permit Californians over 21 to possess up to an ounce of marijuana for personal consumption, grow it at a private residence in an area that doesn't exceed 25 square feet, and smoke it/use it in a non-public place. [continues 454 words]
Kern County supervisors on Tuesday put a 45-day moratorium on the establishment of new medical marijuana collectives or cooperatives in the unincorporated areas of Kern County. They also made it clear they could extend the ban for up to two years. While the moratorium is in place, new medical marijuana businesses will not be allowed to open. Existing collectives or cooperatives will not be allowed to change locations. If they do, they will not be allowed to reopen. Reports from the Kern County Counsel's office cited the need to limit the potential negative impacts of collectives and cooperatives on surrounding neighborhoods as justification for the limits. [continues 590 words]
As Kern County prepares to discuss how to handle the burgeoning number of medical marijuana collectives and cooperatives here, the city of Bakersfield is just learning that it, too, may have an issue with the businesses. Bakersfield City Council members passed a resolution in 2004 declaring that medical marijuana dispensaries were not allowed to open inside the city's boundaries. But cooperatives and collectives have opened despite the rule. At least four collectives are tucked into commercial areas around the city -- on Haley Street just north of Highway 178, on Baker Street in the heart of Old Town Kern, in a commercial strip along Easton Drive and on 27th Street near San Joaquin Hospital. [continues 492 words]
It's well past time for the courts to give California cities and counties a definitive answer on the legality of medical-marijuana dispensaries. Conflicting state and federal laws are sending contradictory messages to law enforcement agencies, medicinal-marijuana advocates and the communities they all call home. Those laws are interpreted and enforced with degrees of vigilance that can vary from city to city. The administration of pot laws shouldn't differ by ZIP code. The latest panel of judges to miss an opportunity to render a clear, unambiguous message about the legality of marijuana dispensaries sits on California's 4th District Court of Appeal. That state appellate court released a mixed ruling Wednesday that did little to settle things. [continues 213 words]
Supervisors will consider Tuesday freezing the number of new medical marijuana cooperatives in Kern County for at least 45 days while they consider whether to regulate the 22 that have exploded onto the scene in the past year. In March 2009, supervisors repealed an ordinance that had limited the number of medical marijuana dispensaries allowed in Kern County to six. None of them liked the decision. All worried it would bring more medical marijuana businesses, organized as collectives, to Kern County. [continues 1202 words]
I liked Mike Miller's Dec. 30 Community Voices article, "America's polarized camps need to stop pretending and bow to certain truths." We should all take a deep breath and resolve for the new year to ban hypocrisy from our thinking. Even though, like most people, I find the "abortion issue" vexing and deeply disturbing, I've never ceased to be amazed how anti-abortionists mightily resist contraception education and the availability of the necessary medications/devices. There's the one place where there's an opportunity to compromise. Also, I was disappointed that Miller failed to mention our propensity to consume alcoholic beverages while opposing legalization of marijuana. Bakersfield [end]
Like the conservatives who invented drug prohibition, columnist Ric Llewellyn ("So-called medical marijuana is a con," Aug. 22) is willing to distort any fact and tell any lie to keep the drug crusade going. The main historic point being that there was no such thing as "drug crime" before we had drug prohibition. When drugs were legal, addicts were not robbing, whoring and murdering to get their fix. There were no drug gangs, no criminal drug cartels and no such thing as drug crime. All of that is a product of a lunatic drug crusade that has utterly failed for more than 90 years. [continues 132 words]
Our Sheriff Donny Youngblood has repeatedly put federal law above state law regarding marijuana. While the federal government insists that its law is supreme over all state law, some California counties don't enforce pot laws like Sheriff Youngblood does. County resources (money) are in very short supply. Instead of spending locally collected tax money to enforce federal laws that the state's voters have rejected as bad law, why not collect taxes from the pot stores for the county general fund? If the Feds want their bad law enforced, let them use federal funds to enforce bad law. Sheriff Youngblood will never stop the pot business. The pot business will continue to enrich criminals so long as law enforcement treats it like a cash cow for their "war" on pot. Mike Kelly Bakersfield [end]
I don't have a problem with sick people having access to cannabinoid drugs; I have a problem with legalizing marijuana. Pot is not medicine and tagging it "medicinal" is a ruse to obscure a new surge toward comprehensive legalization. First, let's stipulate what's already on the table. Basically, advocates say pot doesn't hurt you or society. Opponents say it does. No matter how many reports the advocates or opponents cite, there are plenty of contradictory findings. While the studies are inconclusive, the advantage goes to the opponents. That's why marijuana is still illegal and there is still a controversy after 40 years of study and debate. [continues 707 words]
