California cities, police chiefs support pot regulation for the first time
Yep. After years of actively and criminally resisting the will of the voters, these groups are asking for a seat at the table of regulating marijuana. Because they’ve finally seen the light? No, because they’re afraid of becoming irrelevant.
California cities and police were long considered obstructionists to regulatory legislation they said would legitimize marijuana businesses. But now they are jumping into the marijuana-regulation effort out of fear that the state is inevitably moving toward a sanctioned cannabis industry with or without their input. […]
“Our two organizations independently came to realize that although we remain strongly opposed to marijuana use, it is increasingly likely that in the near future some statewide regulatory structure for medical marijuana could be enacted,†Chris McKenzie, executive director of the League of California Cities, and Covina Police Chief Kim Raney, president of the chiefs association, declared in a recent joint letter.
“We also realized that without our proactive intervention, it could take a form that was severely damaging to our interests.â€
No, they haven’t really changed. But it’s nice to know we’ve come so far that our opponents have to try to infiltrate reform in order to get what they want.
Update:
For more of the sense historically how these organizations have opposed working in a reasonable manner and how they have really not been interested in being a real part of the solution, check out this article from January: California police have no interest in setting pot rules
In 2010, as Colorado lawmakers were creating America’s first state-licensed and regulated medical marijuana industry, fellow police officers at a Colorado Drug Investigators Association conference jeered a state law enforcement official assigned to draft the legislation.
Some of the sharpest barbs came from visiting narcotics officers from California. […]
Training seminars offered for police by the California Narcotic Officers’ Association suggest there is no such thing as medical marijuana and that state voters were hoodwinked into approving its use so people could legally get stoned.
“The general feeling in the law enforcement community is that California’s medical marijuana law is a giant con job,†said John Lovell, a lobbyist for narcotics officers, police chiefs and correctional supervisors. Lovell has led opposition to medical marijuana regulations, saying existing dispensaries in California are “a corrosive presence in the community†and authorities are unwilling to legitimize “free-standing pot shops†that he says attract crime and expand neighborhood availability of marijuana.[…]
But instructional materials for a certified police officer training program offered by the California Narcotic Officers’ Association declare that “this ‘medical marijuana thing’ †is “an epidemic that is infecting our society.†[…]
[Chief Raney] charges that cannabis advocates are unwilling to consider law enforcement’s concerns.
“I have not found those people credible to sit and talk with,†he said. [emphasis added]
Notice that they use the term ‘use’ instead of abuse? That is new. Note how tentative they are; ‘increasingly likely…in the near future…some statewide regulatory structure for mmj could be enacted.’ Also, no mention of outright relegalisation. They also refer to ‘their interests’. Whatever those are, if they conflict with the will of the people they should have no consideration. What they really mean is that they want to be involved to ensure that they do everything possible to mess up any changes planned and hold onto whatever they can of the status quo. IOW they have nothing to contribute. Let them eat their own words: ‘We don’t make the laws, we only enforce them’, and omit them from the discussion. Afterwards, they can be consulted on matters of enforcement of whatever is decided without them. Ask that congressman Cohen who got so angry at the LEO the other day whether the cops should participate. Ask Sanjay Gupta. Ask anyone with a particle of common sense, and they will see the dilemma. Don’t listen to them, they have lied to us for a century. That is the real message they should hear.
“Proactive intervention”?
That was funny, but don’t give up your day jobs.
The last thing any intervention from these groups will be is “proactive”. The entirety of your past actions have been PUNITIVE. Even your joint letter attempts to belittle users of medical marijuana.
Those are people trying to remedy a long-standing process of being in constant pain.
All you can see is your small bits of power over others coming to an end.
How about you contribute to society in some way, instead of cannibilizing it?
Edit time is too short sometimes; what I meant is the message the cops etc. should be hearing is ‘We aren’t listening to you, you have lied to us for a century, but we’re onto you now.’ Too many pronouns. Sorry.
“We also realized that without our proactive intervention, it could take a form that was severely damaging to our interests.â€
I wish they would succinctly spell out exactly what their “interests” are. Of course, we know what they are. And they have nothing to do with “public safety” or “the children” or anything remotely noble…
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Not too far in the future;
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Calvina Fay, begrudgingly admitting that cannabis legalization is a foregone conclusion, has announced the formation of Stop The Sun From Rising (STSFR), a sunshine prohibitionist group.
“We need to stop the sun from rising every day”, said Ms. Fay. “Everyone knows that sunlight is bad for public safety, especially the children.” In protest and to augment their cause, STSFR supporters will wear blindfolds every minute the sun is shining.
When asked why her dress, hat, and shoes were made of bubble wrap, Ms. Fay responded, “Well, with blindfolds on we can’t see anything. We’re constantly bumping into stuff and injuring ourselves. Our bubble wrap clothes help keep those injuries to a minimum. We are very committed to our cause. The science is on our side”.
Former members of SAM are joining Ms. Fay. They’ve changed their name to Smart Approaches to Sunshine (SAS). They are currently seeking donations to have new business cards printed.
If cops think the present prison system was worth installing in order to fight a war on pot, they are evil. At the least, we need to identify these bastards. My sister in law is one and a feminist artist, to boot. My brother wasted his life putting her on a pedestal. She, the bitch will decide what kind of pain control there will be, if any.
Looks to me like the appeal of Lou Correa’s bill to the League of California Cities and the LE lobby is the way it goes after the ability of doctors to recommend marijuana to their patients.
I think they believe this will cut the whole industry off at the knees: if people can’t get the recommendations, they can be treated as straight drug dealers.
Sabet Alert: the evil one cries heresy for anyone who chooses to reschedule marijuana from Schedule I, responds to Dr. Gupta in his CNN piece.
Also, SAM has sent a letter (March 5) to Attorney General Holder, Deputy Attorney General Cole, Administrator Leonhart, Director Kerlikowske, Deputy Director Botticelli, Director Volkow, and Commissioner Hamburg, listing all SAM’s reasons for not rescheduling marijuana. PDF of SAM letter here, complete with a signature by Robert DuPont, the guy who used the lame excuse, “we’ve got to draw the line somewhere†when someone asked him why marijuana should be illegal.
I notice that Sabet acknowledges Robert Dupont as a supervisor for his PHD dissertation…guess that apple didn’t fall very far from the tree….
poor Kev-kev, he’s feeling irrelevant. Guess what Kev? You are irrelevant. The Cannabis Inquisition is ending! Can we say “tar and feathers” Kev?
If he’s lucky…
Can you say “El Guiso”?
what they did to Gaddafi.
A section of the SAM letter;
“Herbal marijuana could never qualify to become anything other than a Schedule I drug because the plant material cannot itself become a medication, even if components or extracts might have therapeutic value.”
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This is patently false. Herbal cannabis in the form of extracts and plant material was prescribed and sold via pharmacy’s prior to prohibition in the 1930’s. It was considered “medicine” then — and for eons before — and is rightly being reclaimed as “medicine” now (actually for a while now as we all know).
The notion that someone can make a decision about what helps them is considered barbaric by the FDA, the AMA and other similar acronyms. We are not to be allowed to determine for ourselves, according to Kevin Sabet and his fellow letter signers. We are only to be told what is good for us by obscure institutions and those who represent them.
Here’s a story of how the Kevin Sabet model of modern medicine is completely untrustworthy: In my maternal grandmother’s later years she would stay with her children in different parts of the country for periods of time so no one child would be burdened solely with her care. During one visit with her youngest daughter she needed to go to the doctor. This doctor had never seen her before and asked for a list of the medications she was taking. When he saw the list he turned to my aunt and said, “Your mother is 95 years old. She should not be taking any of these medications. Whatever her problems are, these prescriptions are not only not helping but are likely making matters worse for her”. When my mother learned about this she was furious. When my grandmother returned home my mother took her to the doctor who had overseen her care for years. When my mother described how another doctor in another state suggested my grandmother didn’t need — and likely would be better off without — the prescriptions her longtime doctor had only recently prescribed, he blithely stated, “Well, six of one, half dozen of the other”. As in “ho-hum, whatever”.That was his esteemed professional response (my grandmother went off the medications immediately). My grandmother lived to be over 100, most likely because she had only brief encounters with the miracles of modern medicine.
I’ll take crude, cannabis plant material, with all its proven medicinal benefits, over Kevin Sabet’s system any day, thank you very much.
…Attorney General Holder, Deputy Attorney General Cole, Administrator Leonhart, Director Kerlikowske, Deputy Director Botticelli, Director Volkow, and Commissioner Hamburg,
A rogues gallery if ever I saw one.
I wonder, who is going to be our Joseph N. Welch for the 21st century? Steve Cohen? Sanjay Gupta?
“You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
Sabet and the WOD are taking a beating in the comments of the CNN article you link to. The same was true for Dr. Gupta’s opinion piece at CNN.
It seems that the tide is turning. And it’s about time.
Sabet and the SAM gang are now trying to arsecreep their way into the Canadian debate. They have Harold Kalant, who I think is in his 90’s, as the puppet here. Sabet’s wife is from Vancouver, and I see Chuck Doucette is on this gravy train too.
http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/new-canadian-marijuana-policy-group-smart-approaches-marijuana-canada-samc-officially-1884856.htm
And the Toronto Sun bit:
http://www.torontosun.com/2014/03/04/legalizing-marijuana-doesnt-make-sense-research-group
Are you sure that it has nothing to do with not wanting to be on the same side of the table as Governor Brown?
This is about California Senate Bill 1262 (SB-1262).
The largest impact from this bill would be that cannabis patients would be required to get a “recommendation” ONLY from their primary care physician.
So-called Pot Docs would be removed from the picture entirely. Since there remain thousands of ignorant and hostile Primary Care Physicians this bill would reduce the number of medical cannabis patients SIGNIFICANTLY.
It’s a back-door way to attempt to minimize the role of medicinal cannabis.
The ONLY way their demands make sense is IF cannabinoid-based therapeutics was universally taught in medical schools.
Then there’s the claim that people on Medicaid would not have any access, since their doctors are involved with the feds and won’t recommend cannabis.
Paranoid Freaks Should Not Hold Public Office…
dwr February 27, 2014 at 9:59 pm
Drunk Correa at it Again…
California state senator writes marijuana bill supported by cops
California state Senator Lou Correa (D-Anaheim) has pulled off the impossible: he’s authored medical marijuana legislation that is actually supported by both the California League of Cities (which has both lobbied against pot dispensaries and helped cities actively ban them) as well as law enforcement, which has never supported a single pro-pot bill.
As it turns out, the bill would require that any doctor who recommends marijuana for a patient must “have a bona fide doctor-patient relationship†with that person. That’s another way of saying that the doctor in question must be either the patient’s primary care physician or a doctor to whom the patient is referred by their primary care physician.
Are You Drunk Correa?
CA SB 289 Clueless Legislation
California Governor Proposes Massive Prison Expansion To Avoid Freeing Inmates
* U.S. prison population largest in world
* Sesame Street’ now has a show for kids with parents in prison
* insidious drug-war weapon
More skipping class? This is last month’s news. Another Correa attempt to sell piss tests. Why even promote such profiteers? Incremental illness on the masses. Cops agree because it is written by the cop lobby. Doesn’t deserve discussion since it is all lies. Cops will bust anyone they see. Then the mandatory treatment in a self paid asylum over a tax paid prison cell. More oh lets be grateful for the crumbs they give us. No truth, no justice and in my mind that defines No Peace!
Seriously, Piss man again? Oh the cops like it, they don’t like anything else. Well I know that is my sole reason for bearing children. If the cops like it. We the cop pleasers of the Untied State of Anemica. Place your hand on the Bible in a Court of Law. Now didn’t they see that one coming? That was going to be a bit of a sticky wicket with the whole thing about separation and first amendment bla bla bla. Swammily swear to tell the hole, truth. and nothing butt the hole. Until death do us part. So help me god. Eh? Cops are exempt from perjury to Congress or the Judge under the DEA “they can do it why can’t I” ruling of the newly merged Supreme Court of the Church, SCOTCH.
☛There is absolutely no one in the state of CA who can’t get cannabis at a dispensary, as it should be, as prop 215 states nothing about sales, and the CA Supreme Court say dispensaries are off limits to bust.
☛There is no state law that over rides the federal commerce laws. As it is the state has no jurisdiction. Adding limits gives states jurisdiction to bust people. get search warrants and sniff dogs.
☛The CUA has no specific reasons to use cannabis. Or does it require a card to prove you are legal. Anyone for any reason.
☛There is no logic incrementally avoiding the simple fact the Ganjawar is based on political lies, omissions and there is no merit classifying it or even regulating it.
☛If Pharma wants to sell it, let them if it works. Patent it the same as anything else. Tax packaged goods, not the farmer, apothecaries or individuals. Removing it as a controlled substance is the right thing to do to avoid prohibition and its pitfalls.
This initiative is written by the cops lobby. If separate zoning initiatives stopping the nonsense of the same drug worriers blocking implementation of 215, I’ll vote for it if it doesn’t change 215.
I haven’t seen any without regulating Nixon’s lies, which is regulating non existent things. That should be of concern more than Ganja. Scurvy dogs laws.
How can the Marihuana Tax Act be Unconstitutional determined by the Supreme Court and then Nixon doesn’t change anything but adds Hemp and Medicinal into the same bogus classification? Now it is being bartered and compromised from a bogus starting point. Also making it Unconstitutional since no human can be expected to obey laws protecting them from non existent phantoms and hobgoblins. Possibly the most-studied substance on the planet
I’d vote for an initiative banning dispensary bans, unless there is a code for banning drug stores and bars.
A remaining sizable and connected body have their own agendas to push and the people are usually the last to know and least to benefit.
Prop 215 was written as a compassionate use act. Not a political MMJ Ax. For anyone to avoid state sponsored terrorism for whatever reason. Possessing cannabis is no reason to criminalize or profile.
No sales are legal. Period. End of that story. Only removing it from the CSA. Not down grading it, not with special permission or I’ll look the other way memo’s.
Remove it and let it be a weed. The people know what to do from there. Really Government, we don’t need your assistance in this matter. Go tend to transferring the wasted funds from deadbeat cops in the DEA to those Americans they’ve devastated and those they’ve taken from, who need it. The following quote is why no honor can come from compromising on less than total removal as a controlled substance. It also can not in any way shape or form develop symptoms from Ganja. Only those using it to extend their tenures as drug worriers and the profiteers.
Does a police advisory council have any business in the medical marijuana debate?
Last month, the Minneapolis Violent Crimes Coordinating Council did something odd. Members decided to make their “strong opposition†to medical marijuana known by sending a letter to the bill’s chief legislative proponents, including State Rep. Carly Melin. It asserted that the chronic pain of individuals did not outweigh the interests of public safety.
In response, Melin solicited the nonpartisan House Research Department for background information on the VCCC. She asked specifically about whether the council had the authority to issue opinions on pending legislation.
.
.
So very recently we heard from a Federal agent who has such concern for peoples’ health and welfare that he wants to continue arresting and imprisoning cannabis vendors to keep them from becoming victims of extortion by certain organized criminal syndicates.
Yesterday the Editorial Board of the Washington Post published an Op-Ed titled “Tax revenue from legalized marijuana may not meet expectations”
The gist of the “opinion” is that if we were to re-legalize cannabis that the cannabis vending corporations that don’t yet exist will become political powerhouses and lobby lawmakers to not have to pay very much in taxes.
…and I had such high hopes for Jeff Bezos into turning the Post into something other than bird cage liner. For the love of god, don’t these people ever pull their muscles when they stretch that far?
Reported on the Seattle NBC affiliate the other night, the excise (sin) taxes on tobacco are 95% of the cost of a pack. They seemed to be suggesting that the tax on marijuana should be that high, too.
We’re worried that these “citizens” (even if they are drug dealing hippies) are going to face extortion, so we came up with a plan: WE extort them first! Genius….
[Chief Raney] charges that cannabis advocates are unwilling to consider law enforcement’s concerns.
“I have not found those people credible to sit and talk with,†he said. [emphasis added]
Right back at ya, Chief.
Sabet:
“Herbal marijuana” – that’s cute…
And, it shows his true colors on this = ‘You gotta wait till Big Pharma can create an artificial copy of each medicinal/helpful chemical in cannabis’ – and of course – charge us for each “new medicines” – separately!
**Oh and don’t forget – they MUST remove any & all sorts of “euphoric side-effects” from these ‘new medicines’, we all know that’s what liquor is for! (But don’t be surprised: they’ll almost certainly lead to other common pharmaceutical ‘side effects’ like = “an increased risk of suicidal thoughts or actions, etc.”
/sarcasm – But at least we can take comfort in that kids won’t maybe get high and go to the E.R. – because they have a panic attack! /sarcasm
BUT, Kev’s IS correct about one thing = we’re using the wrong word here = “Re-scheduling”.
According to his logic = the word we should be using here is “De-scheduling”! – Or, more simply “Removing/Removal”.
It should be sold like any other ‘common herbal remedy’ like, (for example) St. John’s Wort, or Aloe vera – it should be used with caution – but given it’s apparent absence of toxicity at any common/feasible dosage, should allow for it’s use without a formal written/digital “prescription”, the original definition of prescribe = verbally prescribing aka recommending would/should be suffice.
Nor should there be any requirement to go tithe at The Alter of Big Pharma, which is exactly the thing Kev-Kev & Pati-Kake seem most devoted to setting up.
Yeah. The police hate the idea of no marijuana crimes. wherever would they be without those mostly extremely safe, career enhancing busts?
As to the feds.. you’ll never see them let go. It’s far too powerful and useful a control tool.