The Sacramento Bee ran a front page story this week on pot dispensaries multiplying in Sacramento and marijuana advocates running ads on TV in major California cities proposing marijuana be legalized and taxed to help solve the state's financial crisis. The story begins
With a hard-line stance against marijuana crumbling at almost every level of government, advocates of the drug are pushing beyond legality for societal acceptance.
There are about 30 medical marijuana dispensaries in Sacramento that distribute cannabis to patients with conditions ranging from cancer to anorexia who have a letter from their doctor. According to those in the business, half have opened in the last six months, a result of the Obama administration vowing not to prosecute dispensaries if they're abiding by state laws.
The complete story below
The Sac Bee article, entitled "Attitudes change; pot dispensaries multiply," emphasizes that dispensary operators and marijuana activists WANT government oversight of their operations, and want to be taxed, in order to make the business of dispensing medical marijuana "as normal as a Rite-Aid." It's ironic that existing dispensary operators want Sacramento local governments to place a moratorium on the establishment of new dispensaries and to issue guidelines as to where dispensaries can be located and who can operate them. Marijuana activists become The Establishment? But this shows the maturing of the movement and is a natural development.
"It would legitimize us in a big way," said Cody Bass, co-director of Capitol Wellness Collective in midtown. "And it would keep out a lot of different elements we don't want involved – we don't want any Joe Schmoe selling marijuana to a 16-year-old kid just to make rent that month."
Another irony is that currently pot dispensaries are setting up "under the radar" and aren't being regulated by local governments apparently because of semantic obfuscations. According to the article,
City leaders acknowledge they haven't tracked how many operate today, or even when they opened, because most are described in city paperwork with vague terms such as "holistic medicine" or "wellness center."
All ironies aside, thank you Eric Holder. The Sac Bee article for once doesn't go for "even-handed" balancing of the pro and con on medical marijuana and whether there is "argument" over whether marijuana has a legitimate medical purpose. The article sympathetically details the benefits several different people are experiencing because they are allowed to use marijuana as medicine. Then it goes on to describe the efforts of pot dispensary owners around California to -- surprise -- BE TAXED MORE HEAVILY. And the article almost suggests that maybe medical marijuana cooperatives are the solution to national health care reform!
Oakland is considering an additional tax of 1.8 percent on marijuana sales that would go directly to the city, said medical cannabis land use attorney James Anthony. The city heavily regulates medical pot enterprises and has a cap of just four dispensaries.
The Capitol Wellness Collective welcomes an extra tax. The 5-year-old collective, one of the oldest in Sacramento, now has locations in midtown and South Lake Tahoe, has about 4,000 active members and maintains a "compassion list" of 500 people who receive free marijuana because they are on disability and make less than $1,500 a month.
While the El Camino Wellness Center feels like a modern apothecary, Capitol Wellness seems more like a YMCA. It holds classes on budget traveling, art therapy, tai chi, cooking with marijuana and growing the plants. There's a chess club, clothing exchange and weekly raffle for members who bring back empty pot containers.
I'd like to join that club, even if I wasn't using pot. In fact, maybe I will.