Opinion: Marijuana cultivation ordinance goes up in smoke
By Steve Kubby
The City Council rejected a proposed new medical marijuana cultivation ordinance with reduced penalties and improved security for patients from ripoffs and raids. Instead, the fine for noncompliance, which was reduced by the city manager and attorney to $100, was increased back to $1,000 per day.
Even more disturbing, the City Council opted to add a clause that would make public the names of patient growers who are alleged to not be in compliance with the city ordinance, a terrible policy that will be abused by burglars and rogue federal drug agents to harm sick people.
Steve Kubby
The version of the ordinance that was sent to the City Council was a model of tolerance and safety, thanks to efforts by local dispensary operators Gino DiMatteo, Cody Bass and Matt Triglia, as well as the extraordinary cooperation of the city manager and attorney. However, the City Council chose to reject a marijuana cultivation ordinance that could have set an example for cities and counties across the country.
City Council members apparently refuse to recognize that many patients who grow are struggling just to get through each day. Instead, the City Council wants to force sick, disabled and dying patients to jump through hoops that carry severe financial penalties for anyone who messes up. It’s a misguided and dangerous effort to micromanage sick people who they suspect of breaking laws, when those who deliberately or criminally abuse the law or trash homes can still be charged for serious crimes, based upon illegal activities and/or property damage.
The City Council is trying to fix something that isn’t broken, based upon an obsolete legal view of cannabis. Considering that California physicians have safely supervised hundreds of thousands of medical marijuana patients, since the passage of Proposition 215 nearly 15 years ago, it should be clear that marijuana no longer qualifies as an illegal, schedule 1 substance and should be treated just like any other medicinal herb.
Despite threats and fraudulent assertions by the DEA and U.S. attorney, the courts have determined that “currently accepted medical use” does not require FDA approval or more than one state to recognize the medical use of cannabis. Once California passed Prop. 215, cannabis should have been immediately rescheduled. Instead, government at every level perpetuated this fraud and continued to arrest, prosecute and incarcerate citizens based upon a classification that was obsolete and kept in place to target and punish a particular group within society.
The South Lake Tahoe City Council has refused to make a serious commitment to protect the health and safety of our patients, opting to create a Big Brother approach instead. That raises an even bigger question: Why does the City Council seem overly preoccupied with smokescreen issues like pot, instead of real issues like the explosion of pot holes in this town?
Frankly, these and other misdirected actions by the City Council looks suspiciously like a hidden agenda to attack medical marijuana, TRPA, League to Save Lake Tahoe, Gov. (Jerry) Brown and anything, but the real problems facing the city.
What are the priorities of the new City Council? Does the City Council believe it is their job to micromanage everyone, but themselves? What good is a City Council that just adds another layer of bureaucracy and expensive fines, instead of actually doing stuff to make our lives easier or better?
We haven’t heard a word about The Crater (I refuse to call anything that big a Hole), or how to deal with the $300 million repair bill for our streets, or how to pay the $200 million redevelopment debt, or how to overcome the structural deficit of $1 million per year in the budget.
No, instead the City Council is busily adding a $1,000 a day fine to some poor patient who is struggling to make it through each day. Instead of inspecting pot holes and broken streets, the City Council is marshaling our severely limited resources to inspect every cannabis garden in the city.
Getting tough with sick people who grow their own medicine may play well with constituents, but it is a cruel fraud and shameful disservice to the people and businesses of South Lake Tahoe. At this point, the only credible path for the City Council is to suspend any further discussion of pot, until something has been done about real problems like pot holes and broken streets.
Steve Kubby played a key role in the drafting and passage of Proposition 215. He has written two books on drug policy reform and serves as executive director of the American Medical Marijuana Association.
Too bad you never look at this from the property owners viewpoint which is a lot of what the city council is trying to take into account. Unfortunately pot is a cash crop and there are folks out there who grow not for medical reasons but primarially for profit.
Offer up a better solution that takes property owner’s rights into account and we might take your opinions more seriously.
It’s called a lease.
Allowing everyone and anyone to grow cannibis will create more problems than it would solve. With 3 collectives already established in our community we should let them do the growing and harvesting. Many rental homes have been all but destroyed by becoming ‘grow-houses’.
And comparing potholes to pot growing is a bit simplistic. They have little to nothing to do with each other.
^^ Oye. And you want to call something simplistic.
Rape, murder, theft and oppression is what government thugs do.
Steve Steve Steve,
Give it up, its surprising how those that were in attendance for the meeting, including the collective owners agreed the fines were fair, these days driving without car insurance will land you about an $800.00 fine.
Also if you were to actually attend a city council meeting, once in a while, you would know that the city has made great progress with the convention center project, generating money and a plan for repairing the roads, balancing the budget, and funding the core services to operate this City at a professional level (just to name a few).
All you do sir is wine and complain. You use the media to push your agenda and thats all you do, I have yet to see you getting actively involved in this community, I never see you attend any service clubs, or Christams Cheer, or any other community service orgs.
This City does not need you consent to approve or authorize anything.
Tahoe has that many sick people? Every single person using pot is doing it just because they’re sick huh? It’s all about the medicine? Of course, that’s what we said in college too, mom. I take my medicine and I feel so much better now. They’ve been successful at changing our discussion to one about it being all to help sick people, but that ain’t all the users of pot let’s not be stupid. Not everyone who uses cold medicine, or vicadin, or oxycotin or any of the others do it because they are sick.
Dryclean – you took the words right out of my mouth.
Steve,
You were not at the council meeting.
The collectivies were in agreeement with many of the changes, if fact Patient to Patient suggested that the fines were to low and should be raised to a minimum of $500. Be part of the solution, not the problem.
$1000 fine for people not in compliance? Sounds to me like a pretty good funding mechanism to fix the streets, redevelopment, budget deficit, etc…
Once again, the landlords want the government to look out for their monetary well-being while complaining of the government interference in the free market (RE: vacation rental ordinance). You can’t have it both ways. Write a decent rental agreement or lease agreement and go after the renter if they violate the terms of the agreement. If a criminal act is involved, the appropriate law enforcement agency should be involved. Why should there be special regulations that involve the government? Take responsibility for your property, do your background checks. We need less government involvement, not more. When the city’s budget is balanced and the potholes are fixed, revisit the issue and see if the free market needs fixing.
Right on, Dumbfounded! You sound like a libertarian!
First of all, I’ve smoked pot for 45 years, while not ever smokin tobacco, and not drinking very much (not a teetotaler !) – so feel that I’m in a good position of observation. . .
That we live in a place that some consider “cute” to refer to SLT in terms of “poverty with a view”, it is not surprising that this controversy has developed.
As landlords are always conservative on the side of “others” making their investments “whole” , they will always be about protecting property rights (and values).
Tahoe tenants, on the other hand, have their own elegant solution to their own problem, that of having the money to pay the rent. While they are both part of the same equation, one necessarily has to be more resourceful in a place with (+/-)
20% unemployment, including any socially & legally acceptable means available to them.
For eons in Man’s existence, ways have been found to soften the demands of life (think ‘nectar of the Gods, fermentation. etc), so while the one (alcohol) doing the most societal damage is economically programmed as acceptable, the other is still “frontier” in approach.
I believe that the ‘kudos’ recognized for the City manager and attorney are well-deserved, as they use a rational approach to essentially an “age-old” issue: mankind’s ongoing need to mitigate life’s pressures in socially acceptable ways.
It should be obvious (but unfortunately still isn’t to some) that pot is not going away, which is as it should be, given the relatively high amount of damage caused by those others, tobacco and alcohol.
Now if only we could vet a vrip on the other impending disaster, the pharmaceutical. industry, another I have no use for (like alcohol & tobacco), it’ll all be good, once we get our financial priorities in order . . .
Sorry for not catchi.g the V’s (where there should be G’s) as this venue doesn’t have the ‘edit period’ available at some. . .
First of all, I’ve smoked pot for 45 years, while not ever smokin tobacco, and not drinking very much (not a teetotaler !) – so feel that I’m in a good position of observation. . .
That we live in a place that some consider “cute” to refer to SLT in terms of “poverty with a view”, it is not surprising that this controversy has developed.
As landlords are always conservative on the side of “others” making their investments “whole” , they will always be about protecting property rights (and values).
Tahoe tenants, on the other hand, have their own elegant solution to their own problem, that of having the money to pay the rent. While they are both part of the same equation, one necessarily has to be more resourceful in a place with (+/-)
20% unemployment, including any socially & legally acceptable means available to them.
For eons in Man’s existence, ways have been found to soften the demands of life (think ‘nectar of the Gods, fermentation. etc), so while the one (alcohol) doing the most societal damage is economically programmed as acceptable, the other is still “frontier” in approach.
I believe that the ‘kudos’ recognized for the City manager and attorney are well-deserved, as they use a rational approach to essentially an “age-old” issue: mankind’s ongoing need to mitigate life’s pressures in socially acceptable ways.
It should be obvious (but unfortunately still isn’t to some) that pot is not going away, which is as it should be, given the relatively high amount of damage caused by those others, tobacco and alcohol.
Now if only we could get a grip on the other impending disaster, the pharmaceutical. industry, another I have no use for (like alcohol & tobacco), it’ll all be good, once we get our financial priorities in order . . .
maybe if we planted marijuana all along the shoreline of lake tahoe the clarity would come back. seems to cure everything else.