DENIED ACCESS COMING SEZ SWERDLOW

Temecula, CA – In the first part of a two part update on medical marijuana, we start with a personal appeal to get involved and bury past egos from Lanny Swerdlow, RN, LNC, and radio announcer for a weekly talk radio show.

“The issuance by the 4^th District Court of Appeals of a Tentative Opinion affirming the rights of cities and counties to ban collectives under their zoning ordinances is a catastrophe for the medical marijuana community. When it becomes final, there will begin an unrelenting and ferocious attack by cities and counties to close down collectives. With the newly minted right of the cities and counties to criminalize code violations, we will rapidly see 99% of the storefront collectives shuttered. With the closure of collectives will come the collapse of all the associated businesses – collective directory websites, medical marijuana magazines and other businesses that have come to rely on them. Lawyers too will find a major source of income drying up – some may consider that a silver lining.

If you read the 4^th District Court’s Tentative Opinion, it is composed of several bushels of legal gobble-d-gook over interpreting a gaggle of byzantine rulings on zoning laws which can only be comprehended by a lawyer with years of zoning litigation experience. It is not until page 22 that the court concerns itself with the plight of patients, but then dismisses them outright.

“Inland Empire Center has not shown that any adverse effects on the public from Riverside’s ordinance banning MMD’s outweighs the possible benefit to the city.”

One page later, the court totally flips them the bird.

“While it may be inconvenient to go to a MDD elsewhere, this does not outweigh the well-known benefits of avoiding potential secondary effects of MMD’s such as increased crime and related law enforcement services.”

Although the court frivolously dismisses the problems patients would face as “inconvenient” the effect on patients are extremely severe. Most cities and counties already ban collectives and once given the right to ban it is unlikely they will undergo a marijuana epiphany and welcome them.

Bans will force patients to drive long distances, hundreds of miles would not be unusual, in order to obtain their medicine from a collective licensed by a compassionate city. Forcing patients to drive long distances also increases the likelihood they will be involved in an accident.

Elderly and infirm patients are not even capable of making the long drives and will potentially have no access to medicinal marijuana. Add in the costs for gas and wear and tear on cars and this too expensive medicine becomes even more expensive.

Speaking of expensive, competition between collectives, which has lowered prices by 15% to 20%, will come to an end. With fewer collectives, prices will soar with the watchword being “all the market will bear.”

There will also be significant negative effects on the general public. According to CalNORML there are one million medical marijuana patients in California which means hundreds of thousands will be driving long distances. That means more cars on our clogged freeways as well as more pollutants, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. If just 300,000 patients drove just a hundred miles round trip to obtain medicinal marijuana and average 25 miles per gallon, that is an additional 1,200,000 gallons used. If they make just one trip a month, then the total amount of gasoline wasted in one year will be 14,400,000 gallons.

Most patients will not make the long drive and if they cannot grow their own or join a small collective, they will obtain their marijuana the old fashioned way – they will buy it from criminals. Consequently, crime will go up, but that’s what the police want. More crime means more police, more dollars and more guns.

As for negative effects on local municipalities, the court just bought into the unsubstantiated claims of increased crime and neighborhood deterioration. Collectives do not cause an increase in crime and might very well cause a decrease in crime as shown in the 2010 report issued by the Denver Police Department and in a new study released by the Rand Corporation in September 2011 (see next story).

The above concerns and others will be raised in oral arguments at the court hearing coming up soon, but do not to hold your breath hoping that they will be persuasive to a court whose mind appears to be riddled with prejudice.

Allowing cities and counties to ban the only legal method of medical marijuana distribution is the ultimate victory for the cops who have been working to undermine Prop. 215 since the day it was passed by voters in 1996. Now that they have succeeded in destroying the only legal method for the majority of patients to obtain medicinal marijuana, how long do you think it will be before they start going after small collectives and eventually individual patients?

Now that there will only a few legal collectives providing patients with their medicine, how long do you think it will be before California cops contact the DEA and get them to go in and bust even these few collectives? Cops will not be satisfied until Prop. 215 is dead and buried and the threat to their $20 billion a year marijuana prohibition pig trough of taxpayer money is extinguished.

This whole sordid situation is our own fault and especially that of the 1,000 or more collectives who refused to financially support local medical marijuana groups and most importantly Americans for Safe Access. ASA is the only organization with the statewide infrastructure to tackle lobbying our legislators for legislation and mobilizing activism on a local level. If they had been given the resources, these court decisions and recent legislative defeats could have gone another way.

There are only a few options available, but we need to pursue them. Unlike our opponents, we have fought a good CLEAN fight and we will prevail.

Collective operators in the city of San Diego and Kern County have put initiatives on the ballot blocking implementation of bans. If collective operators can get their act together it is an avenue that can be pursued successfully in many jurisdictions.

ASA and CalNORML are working with sympathetic legislators to introduce legislation in the upcoming legislative session in Sacramento, but those solutions could take up to a year to bear fruit and time is running out.

The time is late, but it is not too late. Maintaining and protecting safe, reliable and local access requires cooperation and coordination between patients, collectives and all the players in the medical marijuana movement.

You can and should make a difference. It is time for YOU to be part of the solution. To get involved on a statewide level, contact ASA at www.safeaccessnow.org or CalNORML at www.canorml.org. For information on the local level, send me an email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call me at 760-799-2055, tell me where you live and I will provide you with information on contacting a medical marijuana activist group in your area.”