Grand jury slams Marin officials over medical marijuana

by Jason Walsh, Pacific Sun -

Let the chronically sick folks smoke some pot, for crissakes, a Marin Civil Grand Jury is urging County officials.

In a new report, titled “Medical Marijuana: Up in Smoke,” the grand jury laments the vast closure of medical marijuana facilities in the county and lambasts county and city officials for not have the backbone to support what 73 percent of Marinites voted for when the Compassionate Use Act was passed in 1996.

A Justice Department crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries in the last few years has shuttered dispensary doors across the state, leaving patients with choices of either the black market, dubious online providers or going without pot-pain relief entirely. “The county’s response to this situation has been to take a wait and see position,” reports the jury. “One supervisor stated that medical marijuana is not a priority, and a representative of the County’s Department of Health and Human Services stated that they ‘did not have a dog in this race.’”

Under the Controlled Substances Act, marijuana is considered a Schedule I narcotic, on par with heroin and ecstasy. Critics of the classification say that’s like taking a rated R movie and lumping it in with the rated X’s. Many would prefer to see it regulated along the same lines of more similar drugs as alcohol and tobacco.

The grand jury also took aim at local city councils for bowing to the complaints of the minority of folks who live near the dispensaries—the grand jury refers to it as “the NIMBY effect”—by enacting bans, moratoriums and changing land use codes to drive away the dispensaries.

According to the grand jury, this is in spite of three major studies, including one by the National Institutes of Health, that have concluded “that there is no increase in crime in neighborhoods around dispensaries.” Nevertheless, continues the report, local governments have responded to citizens’ misgivings.

The grand jury cites Mill Valley, San Rafael, Larkspur and Novato as passing bans on dispensaries; Sausalito has a moratorium; Corte Madera shut down a dispensary under threat of a cease-and-desist order. Marin Holistic Solutions, in Corte Madera, is the only dispensary still operating in the county; its agreement with the Town allows it to operate until spring of 2014.

Marin Holistic Solutions serves about 800 patients in Marin, says the report. Their average age is 40. MHS pays sales tax and a gross receipts tax of 1.4 percent to the city. During an onsite visit to MHS, “grand jury members observed tight security measures… and the chief of police reports that there has been no increase in crime in the area.”

In its conclusion to the report, the grand jury recommends that the Board of Supervisors “respect the will of the voters and the intention of the Compassionate Use Act by using its authority to uphold access to medical marijuana within the county” and to develop a viable set of ordinances for medical marijuana dispensaries to operate in the unincorporated areas of the county.

“Compassion without action,” the report concludes, “is not enough.”