A LINE DRAWN IN THE GRASS

Temecula, CA – Let’s step back from the unraveling world of the Middle East, as in Egypt, woohoo! Go Egypt! Now you know who ISN’T getting fluoridated water, more like urinated water if you can believe those travel channel travelogues. However, you don’t have to go much farther than this valley to find any hubbub, Bub. In fact, this latest story comes from just up the road, in Hemet, CA. Seems as though after some tough talk in the newspapers by the Hemet mayor who also supports AZ 1070, the town let at least four MMJ collectives/dispensaries open for business in a city built from mafia money. Now, Dear Reader, you have a cat bird seat as the deal goes down, in Hemet town.

As you read the latest from the trenches of Hemet, keep in mind that the main dispensary mentioned in the article owned by Eddy Hooper, is the one and the same of a previous story post. Unrest is everywhere. This report is mostly by Charles Hand. Will Mary Jane be the hoedown in this showdown?

‘Hemet and San Jacinto are trying to shut several recently opened medical marijuana collectives. Estimates of the number of collectives — by both the city and collective operators themselves — vary from four to seven, but the Hemet City Council Tuesday authorized city staff to seek closure of four shops.

San Jacinto has already begun levying daily fines of $500 against the Nature’s Serenity Collective at 500 S. State St., said City Manager Tim Hults. That collective opened in early November without a business license or permit of any kind, he said. The city council’s Community Preservation Committee, cough Pleasantville, will meet with collective representatives at 10 a.m. Tuesday. Hults said he expects the collective to be represented by its attorney. (This from the city whose whole last staff was indicted by a grand jury. That’s like a fight with your relatives, eeyooh!)

Operators of two of the Hemet collectives, the 951 Wellness Collective at 1325 E. Florida Ave. and the All About You Collective at 340 N. Juanita Ave., acknowledge receiving cease-and-desist letters from Hemet. Another recently opened shop is in the downtown area at 106 E. Florida Ave., but it was not possible to determine whether that was one of the targeted shops at press time. Hemet City Attorney Eric Vail declined to discuss specifics of the action, which was taken in closed session as matters of significant exposure to litigation.'

As the blowback from the political efforts before and after Prop 19, the dew is off the pumpkin as far as pot goes in Cali-state. Even the Ex-Gubernator said on Letterman that “nobody cares if you smoke a joint.” And nobody cares if their neighbor smokes a joint either. Being a social butterfly, I run with an ‘A’ list bunch. The day I went to see Eddy’s collective for the review article, the people I saw in 951 Wellness were not scenesters or even like the patients I’ve seen at closer to hometown dispensaries, i.e., young and slightly distressed. The Hemet folks that I saw at Eddy’s 951 Wellness were upper middle-aged urban, small city, white, and distressed. Everyone and every transaction I witnessed was handled with care, compassion, sincerity, and professionalism. I was impressed with the whole operation (wholeheartedly, not ‘downheartedly’ as written in a review done before decompressing from the tour).

(I realize it may seem like an impossibility to understand that weed to a healthy person is a party, fun, mind-expanding and thoroughly enjoyable; but to a person with problems caused by food preservatives/additives, red dye#2, refined flour, MSG, and who knows what else that has been fostered upon the US populace as a test market, to a person like this, a toke on a pipe is a gift of being normal, of being able to focus, of wanting to eat, or write a story before chemo.

Fast Eddy or Eddy Hooper may be many things to many people, but one thing I can assure you of, Eddy Hooper is a purveyor as well as a participant of cannabis. As a diabetic, cannabis is and has been a staple of Eddy’s life as a requirement to be normal, as in to watch and enjoy San Diego sports like a regular, healthy person. The grassroots niche market in the alternative health genre is part of a larger battle to choke out the natural food supplements (cannabis falling into that category via edibles) by the giants like Monsanto (Soros) who in turn want to re-introduce the products under their brand licensing. Patent Mother Nature so people are paying for lab medicine or paying for God’s medicine, either way as long as they are paying. – Editor’s rant)

Meanwhile the city of Hemet has taken the first step towards shutting down the operation of two collectives. Partners in the 951 Wellness Collective and the All About You Collective say they have referred cease-and-desist letters (they received from the city) to their attorneys. “I’m just so frustrated,” said Eddy Hooper. Hooper a partner in the 951 Wellness Collective, said he intends to sue the city for the right to continue operating his collective, which he says meets requirements of the state law. “I’m 100 percent legit,” said Hooper in a phone conversation.

The partner in All About You Collective, who would identify himself only by his middle name of Allen, said he feels the same, though he concedes the idea of selling marijuana openly is controversial. “We’re all trying to be discreet,” said Allen. “You wouldn’t even know I’m here if you walked by.” Both shops require their customers to have a prescription (legal term – recommendation or caregiver’s recommendation if you are ‘picking up’ for an inbound friend) from a doctor to buy marijuana or marijuana related items, including entry into merchandise areas. Both shop owners said they believe they are providing a service critical to the medical care of their customers.

Hemet, however, has a moratorium on such shops intended to give the city ‘time’ to study the issue and establish regulations for their operation before issuing permits for them. This is the usual ‘stone walling’ or stall tactic, the initial line of defense against change. Hooper added that he is providing jobs for 12 to 14 employees, most of them unemployed before he opened, and that the building into which he recently moved was vacant for seven years before he opened the collective.’ For complete article go here.

As with the collectives in Riverside and this whole area of southern California, the old guard of reefer madness/bunhead mentality that has ruled, like in Egypt, for 30 years, is now in conflict with the younger generation; the cash strapped, fed up urban poor with no way but to grind it out until death. Like the song said, “The heat is ON.” And it’s on all over. (This story dedicated to Fast Eddy Sr. R.I.P.; all emphasis editor)