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Title: MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARY TO CLOSE DOWN
Source:
NORML
URL Source: http://www.mapinc.org/norml/v07/n227/a07.htm?134
Published: Feb 22, 2007
Author: by Jennifer McLain, Staff Writer, (Sourc
Post Date: 2007-02-23 14:31:22 by HOUNDDAWG
Keywords: NORML, government, stupidity
Views: 392
Comments: 7
California ------- HACIENDA HEIGHTS - It's 10:45 a.m. Wednesday, and in 15 minutes the lone medical marijuana dispensary in the area will open for the day. The dispensary, at 15838 Halliburton Road, is next to a string of Chinese bakeries, restaurants and cafes. It would go unnoticed except for a California Medical Caregivers Association sign hanging from the iron door. As one patient waits for the facility to open, he sits in his car and flips through High Times, a magazine that caters to the cannabis culture. Another patient steps into the bakery next door and buys several pastries before he shows an armed guard his prescription and license and enters the dispensary. As of April 30, the facility will close its doors permanently, county officials announced Tuesday, leaving these patients to search for another dispensary to get their prescriptions filled. Just as some community members and county officials had hoped, the owners of the facility agreed to shutter the dispensary, Supervisor Don Knabe's office said Tuesday. "As I have said before, this is not about whether medical marijuana is right or wrong - the voters have already answered that question," Knabe said. "What is most critical is ensuring the Advertisement safety of our children and our neighborhoods." When the pot club opened in 2005, it sparked an immediate reaction from the county Board of Supervisors, said Chris Fusco, field coordinator for Americans for Safe Access, an Oakland-based medical marijuana advocacy group. At the time, the county did not have an ordinance for marijuana dispensaries. A moratorium was passed just a few hours after the facility opened in May 2005. A judge ultimately decided the facility would be exempt from any regulation the county adopted, allowing it to continue operations, Fusco said. In March 2006, the county passed an ordinance that, among other restrictions, prohibited marijuana dispensaries from operating within 1,000feet of schools, churches and libraries. The California Medical Caregivers Association is within 1,000 feet of Newton Middle School, said Knabe spokesman Aaron Nevarez. Representatives at the dispensary declined to comment, but Fusco said the owners took the advice of Americans for Safe Access. "They shouldn't force their way into the community," Fusco said. "They are being a model collective operation" by agreeing to close the facility. According to police, the pot club has not attracted an unusual number of calls. In the past year, police have responded to the location twice - both times because of security alarms that were later canceled by the alarm company, said Sheriff's Lt. Michael Claus. Michael Williams, president of the Hacienda Heights Improvement Association, said he and other residents were unhappy with the location of the dispensary. "They came under the radar and opened the facility," Williams said. "It caught everyone by surprise." While he sympathizes with some of the patients who use medical marijuana, he said there are more appropriate locations for such a facility. "The fact that it opened in the middle of a commercial district kind of doesn't make any sense," Williams said. There are nearly 200 dispensaries in the greater Los Angeles area, although Fusco said that the San Gabriel Valley is greatly under-served. "This is a loss to the patients in the area, and now they will have to travel greater distances to get safe access," he said.
Poster Comment: "The fact that it opened in the middle of a commercial district kind of doesn't make any sense," Williams said. puppy growls: "Of course not! Everyone knows it should be in the middle of the high desert and served by no public transportation and with cameras relaying the vehicle license numbers to cops in all directions. You show me a reefer addict and I'll show you a Bush hater with no respect for law and order.
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#1. To: HOUNDDAWG (#0)
There's an excellent article on med mar dispensaries in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. So this one is shutting down? There are probably a dozen waiting in the wings to take its place. They exist in a strange alternate place between legality and illegality, and their precarious existence is always potentially destructible by the feds. Federal law doesn't allow marihuana dispensaries, state law in Callie does. You can't stop free enterprise, though. And I say smoke on, dubie brothers, smoke on!
Bring my gun and a handful of silver, By the sea we will gather for the fight, It’s been so many years, so many tears, We have lost once before, Now we’ll settle the score, When our cannons will roar - “Revolution!”
I'm convinced that as long as there's one blue suit of the Nixon-Roth era alive and "serving" us, they'll use their seniority to stop any reforms at the fed level. They'll never concede or give "those damned hippies" the satisfaction. And, as long as BIG PHARMA and BIG LIKKA wield their considerable influence we can expect REEFER MADNESS to be the prevailing scientific evidence that's accepted by committees on the hill and over at the drug warriors' tastefully decorated digs. And, Washington hasn't yet begun to stick it to Canada. Wait until the timber imports are threatened and we'll see how committed our Northern neighbors are to leading the world in legalizing medical marijuana. Rolling Stone may feel optimistic about the future of quasi-legal suppliers of med mar, but, I'm waiting for a coordinated lightning raid on all the dispensaries, patients and physicians involved in thumbing their noses at the feds. The jackboots have repeatedly demonstrated that they'll use deadly force whenever the opportunities arise to protect us from the harmful effects of marijuana. AND, if we persnickety consumers insist on sticking it to federal regulators and drug companies by insisting they pull VIOXX-types of drugs, (with no regard for the bazillions of research bux they invested) then the feds are going to protect us from marijuana even if they have to gun every last one of us!
Well sure. You can't have liberty cutting into profits, you know.
Michelle, ma belle. Sont les mots qui vont tres bein ensemble. Tres bien ensemble.
"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may know peace." -Thomas Paine I read an account of a state trooper saying that he'd rather stop a stoned driver going too slow than a drunk speeding and driving recklessly. He reportedly said, "If a man drinks too much he speeds home, kicks the dog, beats his kids and fights with the wife. But, when a guy smokes marijuana he drives home carefully, laffs and rolls around on the floor with the kids and the dog"., or, words to that effect.
That trooper is one in a billion. The others will take either because it means another bust and a mark on their activity sheet.
"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may know peace." -Thomas Paine The bakery's going to miss it.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARY TO CLOSE DOWN
#2. To: bluedogtxn (#1)
#3. To: HOUNDDAWG (#2)
AND, if we persnickety consumers insist on sticking it to federal regulators and drug companies by insisting they pull VIOXX-types of drugs, (with no regard for the bazillions of research bux they invested) then the feds are going to protect us from marijuana even if they have to gun every last one of us!
#4. To: HOUNDDAWG, *LEAP* (#0)
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
#5. To: IndieTX (#4)
*LEAP*
#6. To: HOUNDDAWG (#5)
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
#7. To: HOUNDDAWG (#0)
Another patient steps into the bakery next door and buys several pastries before he shows an armed guard his prescription and license and enters the dispensary.
I've already said too much.
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