Potential Impacts of Legalized Marijuana in California Still Hazy
Supporters for an initiative that would decriminalize marijuana in California have started to gather signatures in cities like Dublin, CA. The measure, dubbed the Regulate Marijuana Like Wine Act, would tax and regulate the cultivation, production and sale of cannabis using grape and wine industry standards. “We’re taking something that’s unregulated and we’re replacing it with a known successful program implemented by the California alcohol beverage control board,” said initiative co-author Steve Kubby.
Marijuana consumption in California is already legal for medical purposes through Proposition 215 as long as patients can provide a doctor’s note with forms and fees to government agencies. Patients must be at least 18 years of age and have a serious medical condition. While medical marijuana is legal in California, many cities like Dublin have already taken steps to block marijuana dispensaries from taking root through temporary bans that allow them to shut down or prevent establishments from opening while side-stepping potential legal challenges from the State of California under Proposition 215.
Cities that have chosen to ban dispensaries did so to avoid Federal scrutiny and pressure from residents concerned about the impact dispensaries can have on neighborhoods. At its August 16, 2005 meeting, the Dublin City Council adopted a forty-five day moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries within the city limits. On September 20, 2005, the Council extended the moratorium for a period of 10 months and 15 days to allow the City to evaluate medical marijuana dispensaries. At that same meeting, the City Council requested to have Dublin’s City Attorney research dispensaries and bring the matter to Council for discussion. Dublin’s City Council passed ordinance 19-09 on May 2, 2006, banning the operation of a medical marijuana facility (Municipal Code 5.58.020). In July, Danville became the latest city in California to pass a ban on marijuana dispensaries.
Although numerous cities in California have banned marijuana dispensaries, their residents still have the option to purchase marijuana through marijuana delivery services. These services allow “ganjapreneurs” to avoid legal challenges from cities with dispensary bans while providing convenience for patients. The mobile delivery service approach also tends to have higher profit margins than brick-and-mortar dispensary services.
“They’re transporting drugs,” said Tommy LaNeir, director of the National Marijuana Initiative, which is funded through the White House’s drug policy office. “It’s a trans-shipment operation that’s trying to bypass the ordinances that have been set up by cities and counties. It’s as simple as that.”
While cities could still continue to ban dispensaries through zoning restrictions if marijuana becomes fully legalized through the latest ballot measure, how they would ban the distribution of marijuana through delivery services remains unclear.
A small number of high-school-aged kids in and around Dublin publicly consume marijuana as if the herb were already legal for consumption for all ages. They have been spotted smoking marijuana while playing in parks, traveling along pedestrian trails, and “hotboxing” in their cars. As with the generations before them, some kids will choose to smoke marijuana regardless of the herb’s legal status.
Given the relative unease many Californians still have with marijuana and the Federal crackdown on states that choose to exercise their rights, how the latest marijuana legalization ballot initiative will fare with voters remains to be seen. Regardless of the Regulate Marijuana Like Wine Act’s hazy future, marijuana will continue to be a part of California’s culture for many years to come.
Related Articles
No related articles.
6:42 AM on August 18th, 2011
No wonder Dublin High has a 20% dropout rate then. Kids are too baked to study.
7:48 AM on August 18th, 2011
“Supporters for an initiative that would decriminalize marijuana in California have started to signatures in cities like Dublin, CA….”
Apparently, a byline writer somewhere is unaware that Gov Schwarzenegger already decriminalized marijuana in ALL of California, like, 11 months ago.
This is for LEGALIZATION, where people aren’t given trouble for doing something that doesn’t hurt anybody else in any way, like having a glass of wine.
8:28 AM on August 18th, 2011
Humans have used marijuana for more than ten thousand years. This stuff isn’t going to be part of California’s culture “for many years to come”, it’s going to part of California’s culture *forever* and we’d better make laws that recognize this!
If there’s one thing that forty years of federal marijuana prohibition has taught us is that it’s impossible to stop people using marijuana. Since marijuana can’t be bought from supermarkets, where are people buying it? Who is getting rich off these marijuana sales and are they causing any sort of harm?
I’m sure we all know the answers to these questions. They buy from drug dealers who frequently purchase in bulk off the Mexican drug cartels. This draws dealers into our neighborhoods making marijuana easily accessible to our kids and diverts more than $10 billion a year to the cartels. This huge amount of money represents the bulk of the cartels’ incomes and provided them with an incentive to brutally murder more than 40,000 people over the last five years. These murders continue today.
Can we stop these murders and end the 800,000 needless marijuana arrests that are made every year? YES – when we allow our supermarkets to legally sell marijuana to adults at prices too low for the drug dealers and cartels to match. It doesn’t take an advanced degree in economics to work out what will happen to the dealers and cartels when their customers desert them for lower-priced, higher-quality weed LEGALLY available from safe and attractive establishments. They’ll go the same way that bootleggers did seventy years ago when adult alcohol sales were legalized.
We may not ever wish to purchase beer, wine and marijuana ourselves but we should *always* insist on them being legal for supermarkets to sell to adults.
7:28 PM on August 18th, 2011
very well said. It’s is insane that this so called free country has most prisoners in the world.
10:23 AM on August 18th, 2011
Jesus said to do unto others as we would have them to do unto us. None of us would want our child thrown in jail with the sexual predators over marijuana. None of us would want to see an older family member’s home confiscated and sold by the police for growing a couple of marijuana plants for their aches and pains. It’s time to stop putting our own family members in jail over marijuana.
If ordinary Americans could grow a little marijuana in their own back yards, it would be about as valuable as home-grown tomatoes. Let’s put the criminals out of business and get them out of our neighborhoods. Let’s let ordinary Americans grow a little marijuana in their own back yards.
Here’s one way that IT IS REALLY WORKING: Arresting the criminals and collecting a fee from registered growers (and bringing in thousands of dollars to support the county budget); what a great plan! This is the way to build a better America! http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/2011/07/the-pot-republic-one-sheriffs-quietly-radical-experiment.html
The current proposal before Congress, bill HR 2306, will allow states to decide how they will regulate marijuana. You can email your Congressperson and Senators at http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml to discuss HR 2306.
And a big THANK YOU to the courageous, freedom loving legislators, governors, and countless others who are working so hard to bring this through! You’re doing a great patriotic service for all of America!
8:56 PM on August 18th, 2011
great points its time to legalize nough said.
1:27 PM on August 24th, 2011
With all due respect to everyone’s opinion, I just really want to put in my two cents against legalizing marijuana because this is something I do feel strongly about.
While I’m all for legalizing this for medical purposes, I have a real problem with legalizing it for recreational use. Just because people have been using it for hundreds of years, does not mean it should be legal. That’s like saying we should legalize prostitution because it’s been around forever and is never going away.
It is evident that marijuana impairs judgement. And while long term effects are still debatable, I can tell you from my own experience, the people I know that use marijuana regularly are not very smart. I believe legalizing marijuana will only make this drug more accessible, and is sending the wrong message to our kids.
Did you know that for every dollar we raise on tobacco and alcohol tax revenue, we will incur an additional nine dollars on related health costs? While figures like this are not available for marijuana, most experts agree that legalizing marijuana will have similar social costs that people don’t think about.
Lastly, I just really want to say to the person who is bringing in Jesus into the argument to please stop. I’m not Christian myself but I’m offended anytime people try to bring in religion or political parties or race into an argument. When Jesus said, do onto others, I don’t believe he was referring to locking kids up for marijuana posession.
3:47 PM on August 31st, 2011
Dope heads.