Wednesday's Claremont Courier carried an article updating the public on Claremont's medical marijuana ordinance. Unfortunately, the article is not available online, having been superseded by more important stories like Career Day at Chaparral Elementary School.
As we've written previously, the ordinance has so defined the sort of medical marijuna dispensary the city would allow as to regulate the businesses out of the realm of possibility:
- It limits the dispensaries allowed in the city to one.
- The dispensary must be registered with the IRS as a non-profit organization.
- It can only operate from 9am to 5pm Monday through Friday, and Saturdays from 9am to 1pm.
- The dispensary will be limited to areas zoned as "Business Industrial."
- No marijuana farming will be allowed.
- If consumables such as brownies or ice cream are sold, the business much be regulated by the LA County Health Department.
- No marijuana paraphernalia could be sold.
- City staff, such as the police chief would have regular access to the business.
- Prospective owners would be subject to background checks.
- Security guards would have to be on premises during operating hours, and 24-hour security cameras would have to be installed.
- Only Claremont residents could be customers, and patients would have to provide proof of residency with documentation to be maintained onsite.
The city will consider the proposed ordinance at next Tuesday's City Council meeting.
We think the issue played out exactly as we predicted. The city was never really interested in allowing the dispensaries. There was never really any good faith effort to work with the possible dispensary owners. Instead, we got this unnecessary exercise in wasted staff time and expense to come up with an ordinance that even some of the people who had pushed the ordinance in the first place are now questioning.
According the Courier article, Councilmember Linda Elderkin "said she would likely vote against it because of conflicting state and federal laws surrounding the dispensaries." And Councilmember Sam Pedroza, who with Elderkin and Claremont Mayor Ellen "Cookie" Taylor had insisted on having the ordinance, signalled his doubts as well in the article:
"With limited state language, and zero support from the federal government, I feel like we're playing a game with a set of broken tools," Mr. Pedroza said.
So tell us again, why we didn't just keep the moratorium against the dispensaries in place in the first place rather than waste everyone's time, energy and money?
The dispensary proponents aren't too happy about the way this has been handled, the article said:
"I don't know why they are backpedaling on a good decision they made that will benefit a lot of sick people," said medical marijuana activist David Kasakove, who was hoping to run the dispensary in town. "It would be really sad if they cave in to peer pressure or influence by outsiders who are not fully aware of what is going on statewide in medical marijuana."
"I thought Claremont was more progressive than that," he added.
He don't know us very well, do he? The proper term for Claremont like our mayor and her friends is "faux-progressive."
All of this could have been predicted, and was. Claremont was never really serious about the dispensaries. It merely gave Queen Ellen and some of her staff an excuse to a couple junkets on the taxpayers' dime:
In researching the ordinance, Mayor Ellen Taylor and city staff visited several medical marijuana dispensaries in San Francisco and Los Angeles over the past several months. Ms. Taylor said that she heard very few complaints from neighbors and neighboring businesses located near the dispensaries.
"I supported them in theory but I wanted to see how they worked in practice," Ms. Taylor said.
After visiting the dispensaries, Ms. Taylor felt "absolutely certain" that a well-regulated facility could run successfully in Claremont.
We're glad that Ellen was able to visit the dispensaries and hope she had her prescription with her. It least answers one question about Taylor that comes up frequently: Is she high?
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