Archive for September 8th, 2009
Found on High Times
CHULA VISTA — The moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries that was set to expire tomorrow has been extended for 10 months while city officials monitor a related appellate court case, study information they have gathered and decide how or whether to regulate pot collectives.
The City Council voted 4-0 to extend the temporary ban, knowing it may not take that long to figure out a process.
In July, the council approved a temporary ban on pot cooperatives after a pair of young business partners applied for a license to operate one and were denied.
The men, Dustin Vogel and Daniel Green, said they followed all the procedures laid out by the state Attorney General’s Office and signed a two-year lease for a shop on Fourth Avenue and Roosevelt Street to run CV Collective.
But city officials said they need more time to figure out how to regulate medical marijuana dispensaries because there are no ordinances that govern them now.
The state law, which allows the sale of marijuana for medicinal purposes, is at odds with federal law, which says the drug is illegal.
The county fought a long legal battle to ban medical pot, which was allowed under state Proposition 215, passed in 1996, but prohibited by federal law.
In May, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case, and the county began to issue identification cards for medical use of the drug. Since then, applications to operate marijuana collectives have popped up across the county.
In Chula Vista, the discussion on Tuesday centered on presentations from the city’s Police and Planning departments and information presented by the District Attorney’s Office. All three reports outlined difficulties collectives pose in San Diego or other parts of the state where they are allowed, such as Oakland, Los Angeles or San Francisco.
Vogel and Green said the information the city presented was skewed and intended to scare officials with examples that crime increases in areas where there are marijuana dispensaries. They also said officials didn’t take into consideration any of the research they presented.
“There are no studies that correlate crime with medical marijuana,” Vogel said. “It’s all conjecture.”
Although all City Council members agreed on extending the moratorium, they differed on how or whether to proceed. Mayor Cheryl Cox said she does not believe dispensaries should operate in the city.
Council members Pamela Bensoussan and Steve Castaneda favored asking for a status report within 30 to 45 days and working on a framework for an ordinance regulating marijuana businesses.
Councilman Rudy Ramirez said he did not want to rush into an ordinance because the city had more important issues to tackle and he feared Chula Vista would unnecessarily put itself at the forefront of the issue.
“I don’t feel a burning need to move forward on this quickly,” Ramirez said. “I feel it would be better to let other jurisdictions move quickly on this.”
Well-known California DUI lawyer Lawrence Taylor is now challenging whether DUI can be applied to marijuana usage.
Taylor is questioning whether marijuana impairs a person’s ability to drive to the degree alcohol does. While there have been various tests regarding alcohol-impairment in driving, there are relatively few to support the same is true of cannabis.
The California Department of Justice has produced studies showing marijuana impairs the motor abilities that are needed for driving. This mostly occurs at high doses or among young, inexperienced drivers. Taylor is citing federal studies that contradict these findings.
One such study performed by the U.S. Department of Transportation researched the topic using a simulator to compare the affects of alcohol and marijuana, both separate and when combined. Alcohol created impairment across the board, while marijuana only occasionally impaired drivers.
Another study cited claims that cannabis, or THC, is not “profoundly impairing.” Some information processing skills are impaired, but not to the ability that a person cannot control driving, according to the study.
A further issue over marijuana DUI laws is the fact that the drug is metabolized quickly but can stay in the body for hours or days. Traces of THC will remain in the body for weeks. Measuring these levels in blood tests may point to chemicals that have been in the body for days.
It would be difficult to prove a person was significantly impaired by marijuana at the time of an arrest for these reasons. First, marijuana only occasionally creates significant impairment, according to federal studies. Second, testing for marijuana use cannot pinpoint if and when the person was actually affected by the drug, only that it is in his or her system.
Laws in California are further complicated by the legal use of medicinal marijuana. Not every person who is found with marijuana in his or her system has even committed a crime. Some may have prescriptions for use of the drug, making the crime in effect no different than driving after taking anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medication.
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