Last week was a bad week for marijuana lovers in California. It
ended with a large raid in one county that netted 850 pounds of
dried marijuana, 400 growing plants, $200,000, a cache of firearms
and the arrest of two Czechs, three Thais, a Bulgarian, a
Ukrainian, and a German. The week began with city councils and
county boards of supervisors pondering the stiff letters they had
just received from U.S. Attorneys’ offices around the state.
The letters put local officials on notice that marijuana
remains a prohibited drug under federal law and therefore those
officials could be held liable if they were to allow medical
marijuana dispensaries within their borders.
Many cities in the state have been wrestling for several
years over ordinances to govern such dispensaries. When medical
evidence showed that the use of marijuana by terminally ill
patients could ease their pain, pro-legalization forces got enough
signatures to put an initiative on the 1996 ballot to allow the use
of it for medical purposes if recommended by a physician. Most
voters took it at face value and, after a campaign generously
funded by the well-known currency leftist George Soros, passed the
measure.
Passage raised new questions. Would patients need a
prescription from their physician? Where would they get the
marijuana? Physicians could not write prescriptions for it because
that would violate federal law. Instead, they wrote letters of
recommendation. As for sources, presumably a patient could grow a
small amount, but that was impractical. Thus, dispensaries began to
pop up all over the state (Los Angeles had several hundred within a
few years). While some of these operated carefully within the
framework of the new state law, labeling each patient’s “grow” with
his or her name, it was widely believed that others were obtaining
it in large quantities and selling with a wink and a nod —
becoming marijuana retailers for regular users who had obtained
“recommendations” from doctors sympathetic with the legalization
movement.
As the years rolled on, law enforcement agencies tended to
ignore people who had very small amounts of marijuana for their own
use, but the dispensaries were another matter. A cottage industry
of growers developed to furnish inventory to many of them. In some
cities (Arcata on the north coast, for example) neighbors
complained about a large number of rental houses that had been
converted to indoor “grows.” The smell was overpowering and the
heavy use of electricity resulted in many fires. Citizens demanded
more restrictive ordinances.
To make matters worse for marijuana growers, an
environmental expert says indoor “grows” cause harmful carbon
emissions and use enormous amounts of electricity. Peter Lehman of
the Schatz Energy Research Center and Environmental Resources
Engineering Department at Humboldt State University presented his
findings two weeks ago to the county’s board of supervisors. “Two
percent of our entire national electric grid is used to grow a
plant. It’s nuts,” he said.
Speaking of that one north costal county, he said that
indoor marijuana “grows” used enough electricity to power 13,000
homes and added 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the
atmosphere.
What’s a liberal pro-marijuana environmentalist to do?
What a dilemma.
What city and county elected officials are doing in many
parts of the state is taking those U.S. Attorney letters seriously
by putting a moratorium on permits for marijuana dispensaries,
closing many and severely restricting their size. In other places,
such as Los Angeles, they are shutting down many that had already
received permits.
Last November, California voters turned down a ballot
proposition intended to semi-legalize marijuana in the state,
despite the federal law. So, things remain status quo.
Pro-legalization supporters claim marijuana is a harmless
recreational drug and that legalization will reduce the crime rate.
Many medical professionals believe it may have long-term negative
consequences for users. Most law enforcement agents think it is an
abomination.
One thing is certain. In the city where this writer lives,
scarcely a week goes by without a police raid on a drug house. The
newspaper reportage is so predictable it could fit a
fill-in-the-blanks form: packaged marijuana ready to sell is
seized, along with crack cocaine, methamphetamine, others drugs,
some cash, a ledger book of customer names and firearms. The two or
three occupants are hauled off to jail, awaiting trial.
Mr. Hannaford lives on the Northern California
coast.
