SATIVA STIGMA IS STICKY

Temecula, CA – Recently Wildomar succeeded in closing down the only dispensary in the new little town. The town’s city manager (I wonder how much he makes?) sounded as proud closing down an avenue the cash strapped (according to the) city could have regulated as if he singlehanded fought off a Med Fly invasion. Wildomar City Manager Frank Oviedo said the city is bracing for a lengthy legal battle. "We won this round," he said. "I suspect we'll be in court ...a number of more times, at the end of the day." it would seem that the same good-hearted, humble, want-to-do-the-right-thing, close-minded people Jesus spoke to are reincarnated and live in Wildomar. So why are people this way?

In many ways the people who run Wildomar are a lot like Adam and Eve, except the city council faces are all the same ‘color’. The people of the Christian church that I was raised up in were also all of the same ‘color’. I remember when I was middle school age a woman started coming to our church every Sunday. I knew she was new because she would sit up in the balcony. Since our church had seen their glory days prior to my being born, it was rare for the church to even be half full on the downstairs level. So every Sunday quiet as a church mouse, this woman would sit humbly and take in the sermon.

I noticed this regular Sunday visitor too because she was dressed in a poorer coat than anyone else in church. This lady became my pet project. I watched for her every Sunday and every Sunday she was there. I waited for the day when someone or one of the ushers would greet her and invite her to sit downstairs with the regular membership. There were some Sundays when she brought a couple of kids with her. After attending on a consistent schedule for about six months, someone finally acknowledged her presence. It was another month before she felt comfortable enough to come downstairs.

Though I knew people were timid coming to a new church, I thought that the woman’s perceived financial status had a great deal to do with the lack of hospitality or slowness in it being offered. The people of my church weren’t bad people and though a number of them would become big in the local black civil rights scene, they just lacked faith in accepting a stranger whom they perceived to be a minus instead of a plus. The woman was judged by her clothes not to fit in. plenty of ministers have laid the blame for Man’s Fall by Adam as conceit, arrogance, or disobedience, I think it was a lack of faith and seduction.

Wildomar's City Council considered allowing marijuana dispensaries earlier this year. It was pushed into action when Wildomar Patients Compassionate Group first opened, in March, for three days before being shut down. Medical marijuana activists lobbied the city to allow dispensaries and the council, led by then-council member Sheryl Ade, had its attorney draft an ordinance. But in September, the council voted down the ordinance, with only Ade voting in favor. A month later, Ade was voted out of office, losing to two challengers who opposed the ordinance.

Oviedo said Wildomar and other California cities have been put in the difficult position of having to regulate medical marijuana facilities, despite never having jurisdiction over other pharmaceuticals. The state allows marijuana for medical use but the federal government still classifies the drug as illegal, leaving local governments and judges to sort it out. Oviedo said, "Somehow (helping ill people) became city government's problem," he said. The city of Wildomar has been seduced to perceive medical marijuana patients as a problem, not a solution to their money woes. They see the MMJ bunch as a minus not as a plus, like the Christians at my old church looked toward the poor lady.

Since the MMJ folks didn’t band together and rally support, their only ally on the close-minded city council was voted out in the last election, leaving them with no voice but the courts. However, one man, upon seeing the lay of his new city's land took matters into his own hands concerning his fate. Tom Fuhrman, owner of the Wooden Nickel Ranch and event venue in Menifee, heard discouraging words about his home on the range shindigs and ran for office. He won. One of these days MMJ patients in all these towns will quit begging for compassion from people who have judged them unfit to fit in and start asking for votes to change the city council members. The stigma surrounding cannabis sativa is sticky like pot tar. Only when one of the council gets sick and sees how cannabis can relieve pain and stimulate an appetite will the stigma dissipate like smoke, pot smoke not cigarette smoke, and then only for that one person.