The Planning Commission in Colorado Springs is not only looking out for the welfare of the citizens, they’re going all out to make sure that Colorado Spring doesn’t sell its soul to the devil.
Apparently this involves making it almost impossible to find a location for a medical marijuana dispensary.
The commission recommended a 1,000-foot buffer zone between dispensaries and schools, including preschools, colleges and universities. […]
The commission also recommended the same 1,000-foot setback between dispensaries and all residential child care facilities and drug and/or alcohol treatment facilities, which could include places where Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are held.
But they’re pretty despondent, because they know that the City Council will probably over-ride them — not because the idea is stupid, not because they want to prevent sick people from getting medicine, but because they’ll get licensing fees from the dispensaries, which is apparently the hardest bargain they are able to negotiate with the devil for the souls of Colorado Springs.
Commissioner Carla Harstell said the council seems motivated “by one thing and one thing only” when it involves medical marijuana: revenue.
“I think we’re selling our soul to the devil if we make all our decisions based on how much money we’re going to get from a business,” she said.
You know, selling your soul to the devil used to mean something.
Of course, those who have followed so-called “drug free zones” know that the notion of zones is just a fancy way of trying to legislate something out of existence. I fail to understand the value of requiring a heavy regulated place that provides medicine to sick people to be far away from schools.
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These 1000 foot setbacks generally mean that very large swaths of the city are off limits. It is the same thing they used to legally push convicted sex offenders into living under bridges. In some cities, there are NO places in city limits that is not within a prohibited zone.
Greed is why marijuana was made illegal and it is only fitting that greed will be what sets it free.
Public policy has nothing to do with souls, devils, or any of that crap. It’s about effective policy.
Is CVS,Rite Aid, Walgreens included in this buffer zone?
No, and they don’t apply to gun stores generally either. So, if you wanted to open a dispensary to get medicine to sick people, no-go. But if, say, you wanted to open a “Joe’s gun, ammunition, knife and toxic solvent outlet” store next door to your local elementary school, you could do so with the City Council’s blessings.
Excuse me, the “Planning Commission”.
Is it not Colorado Springs where,FOCUS ON THE FAMILY have their headquarters and there many followers in vicinity,their
probably very vocal about this no Cannabis medical dispenseries will not dirty up there community if they have any say. Yeah its the not in my neighborhood mentailty they used to use to keep out,blacks,witches, and gay people and now Medical Marijuana patients,they do not see it has dicrimination but protection from druggies on pot that just want pain relief or to relax once in a while from life travails. These communities will come around grass roots folks working heartly everyday to push back on there bigotry sorry for strong words. but these folks should now better.
Remembering back a year or so ago there were high hopes, and expectations to boot, that the entire state of Colorado would get the medical marijuana thing straight.
And I remember hearing something to the affect of: Colorado the next California and Colorado will out do California in reform.
Glad we didn’t move there. We were considering it.
Nothing ever said about where to put a Wallgreens or a tourist trap within so many feet of a school. As long as they’re not selling pot anyone can live anywhere…
Sacramento Okays Sex Offenders near schools
They’d rather have a halfway-house for Pedophile Priests on their block than have a dispensary nearby don’t ya know. At least they can identify with them.
Their There Vicki, They’re there.
I’ve got to admit I found it ludicrous the first time I ever visited a California medical cannabis vendor and accidentally walked into the 12 step social club next door. However the drunks were very cordial and directed me to the dispensary without seeming upset. That’s the amazing thing about drunks “in recovery”, they seem to think their problem is within them, not forced on them from without, and as such can only be dealt with from within. But what the heck do a bunch of drunks know? What is the official AA policy on dispensaries next door? That would be Tradition 10.
Aren’t drunks just some of the silliest people you’ve ever met?
By the way the Planning Commission should be informed that AA and NA clubs are almost invariably legally organized and licensed as social clubs, not as “treatment facilities”. They tried the same idiocy in California and had it backfire for just that reason. As a matter of fact using the very 12 step social club I accidentally stumbled into as an example of victims needing protection from the sick people buying their medicine. The same social club that was full of drunks that didn’t seem bothered that there was a dispensary next door. Perhaps the drunks were just amused that I asked them for directions to the dispensary without seeming freaked out. I’d think it reasonable to speculate that most people who haven’t been to a few hundred 12 step meetings would freak out if they found themselves in a 12 step club when they were looking for a dispensary. Then again I knew that they had their silly steps and traditions and would likely adhere to them. They have this imbecilic idea that if they don’t keep their eyes on the prize that they’ll end up back at the bottom of an empty bottle of booze, or even worse, mouthwash. Man these people have some of the worst bad breath you’ve ever encountered. No mouthwash because it can get you drunk, now how silly is that?
It seems like a lot of the Know Nothings’ lame ideas seem to backfire on a regular basis. They might have better luck if they got the facts before they made their decisions, or at least made better guesses. Maybe even SWAGs would cut down on their abysmal record of failure. Wallowing in ignorance is not a path to success for anyone, much less for morons.
“Treatment facilities” require compliance with a lot more regulations and drunks just hate rules. All that licensing and certification and whatever other hoops the “treatment facilities” are required to jump through to open and remain opened are just to complex and vexing for the drunks to deal with so they came up with this workaround. They’d have to change a different “official” policy, this one being the 3rd Tradition.
Yes folks you’re welcome to show up at the AA meeting if your drunk to the point of almost passing out as long as you don’t like being drunk. Heck, they don’t even mind if you drive to the meeting, though they will steal your car keys and drive you and your car home after. Then they’ll keep your keys and deliver them back to you the next day. The rat bastards will even use force if necessary, but for some reason would never in a million years call the police to prevent the tragedy of drunken driving. These are some very irresponsible people.
Did you know that their unofficial policy is to let you take the money when they pass around the collection plate, because one of their guiding, though unofficial platitudes is to “Take what you need and leave the rest?” Yes, you’re only allowed to take the money if you need it but that’s a pretty subjective standard, now isn’t it? Really, these people are out of control. They’ll even admit it if you ask! Heck, it’s the First Step for crying out loud.
Silly, silly, silly people. They should be grateful that the Planning Commission is there to help them to stop being “powerless”.
Why the heck is a buffer between dispensary and school needed? It’s cardholders only, essentially a private club. I’ll betcha most dispensary operators would turn their clients in or at least bar them if they found them buying and reselling to school children. Restricting or forbidding overt signage would keep the poor little chilled wrens clueless. But the chilled wrens are nothing but pawns in the game.
Colorado Springs certainly has a wild hair up their collective ass nowadays WRT medical cannabis. Perhaps it’s the dispensaries’ effect on the crime rate, I don’t know. I’m not sure why, they’re the ones with the soldiers volunteering to eradicate the horror of supplying medicine to the sick.
http://www.gazette.com/sections/article/gallery/?pic=1&id=108271 <—effect on crime rate, wow, whoda thunk it? Of course that was all the way back in September, so no wonder everyone's forgotten, that was well over two months ago!
http://www.gazette.com/sections/article/gallery/?pic=1&id=108271 <—soldiers eradicating medical cannabis, recently covered by Pete. Gosh I bet they wish they'd employed the traditional burglary ring procedure and posted a lookout to secure the perimeter rather than using their iPhone. Yes indeed, there's an app for that. But iPhones still can't open doors that lock themselves yet, they're still working out the bugs in that app.
http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/article.asp?article=343862&paper=59&cat=104 <— iPhone as a burglary tool
(standard disclaimer applies, the above is parody, sarcasm, and an exercise in stupidity and as such not meant to be taken seriously. Perhaps the converse is implied or reasonably inferred as being a serious matter. As much as I hate Know Nothings and "drug treatment" professionals I have nothing but respect for the 12 step cults. Unlike other cults they will leave you alone if you ask them to do so. Yeah I wish they'd dump the policy of signing the slips of the court ordered attendees and the reliance on the big Fairy Tale. I'd likely go back to some meetings if they dumped the "higher power" nonsense.)
denmark, I don’t think you’re aware of just how many California communities have shut down medical cannabis retail chain entirely. There are a signficant number of Californians who have to drive for hours to get to a dispensary, particularly the Inland Empire communities. Colorado is definitely doing a better job of getting medicine to patients. Coloradoans with long drives are almost always up in the hills. It’s more a function of of living where there’s little commerce to speak of, they likely have to drive a comparable distance to find a Home Depot or a Wal-Mart. Colorado is doing a much worse job of getting medical cannabis for recreational use to the malingering. Saying that they are doing a better job of preventing diversion would also be a valid description. It’s really hard to say that Colorado Springs is going to shut down medical cannabis vendors when the Planning Commission Know Nothing said that it wasn’t going to happen and blamed it on bureaucratic greed. The entire thing stinks of political grandstanding. Often politicians lobby for things they know that haven’t a prayer of passing and sometimes with the blessing of the loyal opposition. It’s why I found the Iowa BoP’s unanimous 6-0 decision to move cannabis to schedule 2 and recognize it as medicine even more incredible as it could have been done at 4-2 with the agenda of providing political cover for the 2 of the more politically vulnerable members.
Did we miss the fact that she’s talking against the will of the people because the planning Commission is doing this because the people voted in favor of establishing “MMCs” in El Paso County? I’m presuming MMCs are Medical Marijuana Centers as I’ve never before seen that acronym anywhere before today. The vote was very close to 50-50 so even more support for the thought that she’s engaged in political grandstanding. I can’t find when she’s up for re-election or even her term but she wasn’t on the ballot earlier this month.
Another controversy we should consider is that a couple of days ago the Planning Commission voted to exclude the public from the discussion. However here we find Ms. Harstell voting against that piece of bureaucratic fascism. IMHO even more support for the notion that today’s rhetoric is nothing but political grandstanding. But a politician without a website in this day and age? Am I missing something?
http://citydesk.freedomblogging.com/2010/11/23/planning-commission-blasted-for-denying-public-testimony/5236/
Crap, there were 41 local measures on the Colorado ballot on election day related to Amendment 20. I completely missed that back on Election day. Now it looks like I’m going to be up all night. Try to avoid obsession folks. It makes it hard to sleep at night.
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Frankly I was shocked at how much sense was in Mr. Romer’s bill. I don’t think it’s going to survive the Colorado Supreme Court unless Colorado is really an odd duck state and the State Constitution can be changed by a simple majority vote of the legislature because the new law most certainly alters Amendment 20 significantly. Right, wrong or indifferent that likely doesn’t matter, it’ll get gutted or tossed. Well unless the Colorado Supreme Courts defines words with the definitions they want them to have. We’ll have to wait and see what happens but it’s going to the State Supreme Court guaranteed. I think Mr. Romer actually put a lot of thought into the bill trying to eliminate diversion while getting medicine to those in need. While he’s still a Know Nothing practical. I really think he wants to do the right thing. Similar to my opinion of our future friend Mark Kleiman.
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The thing that kills me is that if Amendment 20 and/or the California CUA and SB420 disappeared without a trace at 9 AM tomorrow local time that the malingering that these people are so worried about getting high on the medical cannabis will have cartel weed in hand by noon. The truly ill are too sick to go find the shadowy and out of sight places where black market cannabis vendors lurk while the malingering are already on a first name basis with these people. Some Know nothings argue that almost all the patients are malingering. I stipulate the point and say how does 98% sound, can you live with that? Only 2% of the patients are worthy because they’re either suffering horridly or have one foot across the threshold of death’s door. The rest are malingering frauds I can work with these numbers. Even the most deranged Know Nothing acknowledges that there are true, valid patients getting relief from cannabis nowadays. They’re where I got the 98% fraud number. That means there are 1731 very sick people using medical cannabis in Colorado and somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 in California. (There’s no registry in Cali, numbers of recs from any source are guesses. I’ve heard 300k-500k just this year which is how I got 6k-10k. 1731 is just a cunt hair in excess of 2% of the 86,539 cardholders reported as approved by the Colorado Medical Marijuana Registry. IIRC I rounded up from 1730.7.
http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/hs/medicalmarijuana/statistics.html ) So, inconveniencing the malingering is worth paying the price of forcing between 8,000 and 12,000 people suffer? What kills me is that so many do think that reasonable. They really have the fantasy that the malingering will be prevented from getting high. These people don’t stop & think. Both places fine $100 for petty possession. The rate is about 3% of the potheads getting busted every year meaning that they can expect to have to pay that $100 fine once every 33 years on average. It’s more realistic to say once every 10 years for minorities, and once every 65 or 70 years if you’re white. It costs about $250 every year to get a recommendation and a card every year as well as putting your name on at least one “list.” It’s rubbish to claim that these people want anything other than to past the dispensary’s door and have safe access to a (somewhat) quality controlled product. It always seemed to me to be an almost lily white clientele as well. You know, the ones willing to pay in the neighborhood of $15000 in constant 2010 dollars spread over the decades to avoid a $100 fine in nominal dollars? I mean one single fine as well. It’s horse shit to claim that these people want a ‘get out of jail free’ card but wow I’ve heard that one quite a number of times. No Shirley, Coloradoans and Californians have no chance of getting put in jail for petty possession of cannabis. To put that fine in perspective California fines those who park in spaces reserved for those with a valid handicapped permit almost $1000, and you can get a healthy towing fee tacked on if the tow truck gets there before you get back. But they still seem to think that Western civilization will collapse and their daughters will start enjoying miscegenation in the absence of that fine every 60-70 years. It really make me want to puke my guts out.
(no disclaimer, the above is not parody, sarcasm or intended as an exercise in stupidity so feel free to take whatever you like from it.)
Duncan20903: While I didn’t read your entire comment(s) we can say that Oakland, California is planning and approving a major grow operation and it appears the frakking idiot Cooley will be voted out as att general.
I don’t think Colorado is doing a worse job, there’s no way for me to know the whole story unless I lived there. And that goes for California too.
As far as driving to get my meds, I go two hours One Way.
Not easy to do but well worth it. (and there’s a WalMart and a Home Deppt about five minutes from my house).
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In the meantime Orange & LA Counties just said no, and coordinated to do it in concert:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/23/local/la-me-medical-marijuana-20101123
That’s a pretty big swath of land and population, no?
So you’re in Colorado denmark? My experience in California was having medical cannabis in hand less than 48 hours after landing in Oakland with no clue about the procedure or even bringing the required documents with me. I didn’t even know I was going to end up a card carrying medical patient when I got on the plane. I had read that the Bulldog cafe in Oakland required no ID. The man at the Bulldog seemed beleaguered as he’d been turning people away for weeks who had read the same article. Having flown that distance I refused to accept defeat. The major hangup and delay was getting the DMV to issue a driver’s license. If I had taken my birth certificate with me I wouldn’t have had to go to the Alameda county courthouse to get a new one. Doing that took me past closing time at the DMV and made me wait until the next morning to get my driver’s license. I could have been up and running in less than 24 had I carried my BC with me. Having been born there also helped speed things up considerably since it was just a short ride on the BART to get my birth certificate. Don’t expect to move so fast if you’re not in the land of your birth.
The presence of communities that accept and embrace cannabis doesn’t disprove the existence of communities that are stuck in the 1950s and still fighting the war on (some) drugs by any means they can imagine. (The latter are significantly more prevalent in California than in Colorado.) Fortunately they haven’t got much in the imagination department. What’s amazing is the progress that potheads have made against the machinery and resources of the Know Nothings. That old man may be a real motherfucker but we’re getting ready to kick his motherfucker ass right on down the line. There’s only one person/entity that can expect to never have the possibility to come across another person/entity that’s bigger and badder and ready to kick somebody’s ass if confronted. But we’ve got one asset they lack, and can never acquire no matter what they’re willing to try or price they’re willing to pay. Well short of joining us, but then they wouldn’t be Know Nothings anymore, now would they? Oh that asset that we have and they don’t would be the truth. That’s our advantage and their fatal error for not recognizing. The only other thing we needed was the gumption to take them on. The number of us who are madder than hell and unwilling to take it anymore has finally achieved critical mass, and the Wall is coming down. They don’t have a choice in the matter anymore.
(an off topic explanation of the “Know Nothing” denigration that I often use to refer to prohibitionists. It refers to the fact that they know nothing about the out of sight workings of the cannabis black market. Although that is realistically expected from people who have never been on the inside, they seem to think that they know what is real and what isn’t without any basis except what they’ve been told by those who use an argument that consists of bald faced lies, half truths, and hysterical rhetoric. Subsequently they refuse to listen to those of us that are actually on the inside when we point out their gibbering ignorance.
There’s also the part that when we ask for at least a little bit of consideration that they reply “no, nothing”)
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I don’t expect anyone to read my screeds, in whole or in part. I write them because I enjoy blathering, and particularly on this subject. You won’t hurt my feelings if you skip my posts in their entirety, and you are more likely to confuse me and make my brain hurt worse if you actually read them and claim to enjoy my blather.