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US CA: Monahan Supports Regulation Of City's Pot Collectives

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URL: http://www.mapinc.or...2/n029/a05.html

Newshawk: Herb

Votes: 0

Pubdate: Tue, 10 Jan 2012

Source: Daily Pilot (Costa Mesa, CA)

Copyright: 2012 Daily Pilot

Contact: dailypilot@latimes.com

Website: http://www.dailypilot.com/

Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/578

Author: Joseph Serna

 

 

 

MONAHAN SUPPORTS REGULATION OF CITY'S POT COLLECTIVES

 

Police estimate Costa Mesa has more than 40 marijuana dispensaries, even though they are technically illegal because a city ordinance bans them.

 

COSTA MESA -- Mayor Gary Monahan wants to legalize marijuana dispensaries in the city.

 

Speaking with retired U.S. Army veteran Robert Martinez on KOCI radio's "Cannabis Community" show Sunday morning, which was broadcast from his bar, Skosh Monahan's, Monahan said the city has to look at legalizing and registering the city's collectives to bring in regulation.

 

"We're looking at real closely registration and regulation, and hopefully weeding out some of the bad ones," Monahan said. "If you're not paying workman's comp, if you're not taking care of your product, if you're putting bad things in there, that's where the police have to come in and got to get those people out of there."

 

Police estimate there are more than 40 marijuana dispensaries in the city, all of them technically illegal because of the city's ordinance banning them. But police are shutting them down case by case, revealing shades of gray in how authorities view the operations.

 

"We don't have the manpower to shut down 50 locations," Monahan said on the show. "Everytime you shut one down, another pops up anyway."

 

The city is in litigation with multiple marijuana dispensaries in the city; some the city has labeled as a "nuisance" and then shut them down. In the past three years, police have shuttered multiple marijuana businesses because they were operating outside the state's Compassionate Use Act guidelines, which California voters approved in 1996 that legalized marijuana use for medicinal purposes.

 

Costa Mesa is facing a situation similar to cities across the state, Monahan said. There are guidelines on how dispensaries can operate, but there are no guidelines on how individual cities can regulate them, he said.

 

Monahan said he was open to formally requesting that Sacramento lawmakers create guidelines for local regulation. For now, the city is in a watch-and-wait pattern on how the courts handle other cities' lawsuits over dispensary regulation.

 

"I'm working on coming up with a way to deal with this issue, but I don't have the answers yet," he said. "I'm working on one that I can bring to our City Council at some point."

 

On another front, Monahan said he was unaware that Sunday's broadcast was also being promoted by a local dispensary as a campaign fundraiser for him.

 

According to an employee at LiveWell Cooperative Caregivers, the club was handing out letters to its members encouraging them to hear Sunday's broadcast from Skosh Monahan's.

 

Local blogger Geoff West took a photo of the letter, which he said was posted on the club's front door. In it, it offers free joints for anyone who brings back a receipt from the bar and a $20 credit if they donate $20 to Monahan's reelection campaign.

 

"I absolutely knew nothing about that," Monahan said. He said the event was not a fundraiser and he did not seek campaign donations.

MAP posted-by: Jo-D

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well, i hope he does indeed get re-elected. can't even say that i disagree with using the city powers to raise industry standards. good for him in saying such things aloud & in a public venue. pretty sure most reasonable people (politicians) think these things, regardless of what they actually say in public or vote upon. cali is a bit of a different beast though.

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Regulation just makes more barriers but it is going to be necessary . Supply from the Farmers Markets are a basic requirement of the legal cannabis patient and caregiver who must have a cash market for supply and demand as is required for any perishable product . Patients need dependable supply from different sources separated from the black markets it is the next progressive step for creating a legal framework that removes activities from the underground economy into the light with the equal rights afforded any commerce and medical treatment . People are naive when they do not understand black market supply has always been under the eye of corrupt governmental participants who even now work in the background attempting to subvert the progress of legal medical cannabis .

 

On a side not we are seeing people progress into more functional situations due to use which will enable them to live longer and happier . Sadly patients have no job opportunities with current laws actually barriers which need to be removed . It is sad our legislature can't in some way incentivize Michigan Businesses for hiring patients on the program as well as open up equal educational scholarship access for registered qualified patients . It has been horrific where patients were hired in Michigan Dispensaries to be later arrested and prosecuted for conducting employers business or doing their job causing them harm . This should be stopped and in a fair world the Governor would pardon them . The penalties are unbelievably out of proportion to any perceived threat from their fabricated crime as we sort out what the needs and requirements are to support the availability of legal medicinal cannabis in our State as initiated by Proposal 1 in November of 2008 .

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