An open letter to the Ad Hoc Citizen Public Safety Advisory Committee: Marijuana vs. violence Of course the greatest need is to stop the violence, shootings, drug dealing (I don't mean the marijuana clinics; I mean real drug dealing on the streets), burglaries, robberies, vehicle thefts, and way down at the bottom, prostitution and vandalism. The police should patrol -- either in cars or walking or bicycling -- to establish a presence. Arresting people for selling marijuana in clinics is silly, wasteful, and embarrassing for grownup cops. They won't even come out to take a report on vandalism, and they don't investigate burglaries or robberies. But they bust marijuana clinics. [continues 729 words]
The closing of the marijuana clinics will be another of those unbelievable Vallejo stories: The town turned down a Walmart because it wasn't classy enough for the city. It closed down the only grocery store downtown, with a condition that it never open again, resulting in no grocery store for the thousands of people downtown (the city planners turned the site into a church). The school district was taken over by the state. The city went bankrupt, and it has burglaries, rapes, shootings, murders, and robberies throughout neighborhoods lined with churches. [continues 469 words]
Instead of getting a mass shutdown of all the marijuana clinics in Vallejo, the mayor instead instructed the city manager to write a letter more fully explaining their tax obligations and their legal status. Perhaps it will go like this: "You are responsible for city sales taxes, license fees, and business taxes, but you may be shut down at any time. You never know when Elliott Ness, our police chief, will strike." The clinics are warned that several raids have "occurred" since February, like they were lightning strikes, and that one never knows when they will "occur" again. They occur when the police chief decides to strike. Does he call up his buddy at the DEA, who assists in this high-level crime fighting as the chief ramps up his Gestapo squad to "bust" another illegal operation to drive these criminals out of the city for good, and destroy the lives of the operators and employees? [continues 198 words]
Regarding Pat Nelson's letter ("City of Shame," March 29): Vallejo is a city of shame not because of our marijuana clinics, but because of our burglaries, vehicle thefts, robberies, assaults, rapes, shootings, and murders. Marijuana smokers tend to talk, laugh, and eat a lot of potato chips -- not burglarize homes or go on shooting sprees. As for the notion that regulating and taxing clinics as businesses, like other businesses, sends a bad message to our kids, we had better tell our kids about drugs. Our society (the entire United States) is flooded with drugs of all kinds -- some legal, some not. Any of them can be destructive if used in a destructive manner -- abused -- including our national drug: Alcohol. And yet alcohol pervades our culture -- we expect our parents to teach their children about the consumption of alcohol. [continues 381 words]
The New York Times (Jan. 9) reports that marijuana dispensaries in our Bay Area are undergoing new scrutiny in the form of IRS investigations to uncover unreported profits. The IRS has raided several dispensaries to inspect their books, finding in some what it considers questionable bookkeeping practices. There is no reason to suppose marijuana dispensaries are any less (or more) inclined toward tax fraud than pizza parlors; dispensaries should be inspected and regulated like any other business. But it hardly seems accurate to paint all dispensaries as law violators on the basis of a few bad apples.(San Jose has 98 dispensaries!) [continues 268 words]
