Patients who need marijuana to treat acute medical problems will soon see their city-validated suppliers shut down, thanks to bungling by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Likewise, residents who suffered aggravation from poorly regulated suppliers in their neighborhoods can look to the same cause.
Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi, Chris Daly, and Tom Ammiano are the chief culprits. In January 2006, the city put into effect a new medical marijuana law they had created a month before, having only minimal controls and standards, and easily evaded.
Later, the three successfully pushed for exemptions for favored suppliers that flagrantly violated the weak rules. They encouraged law enforcement officials, both local and federal, to look the other way in the case of abuses.
For example, a Lower-Haight outlet continued to operate until the summer of 2006 in violation of the zoning requirements of their law. In response, the three got the board to change the zoning regulations for the whole neighborhood. Yet when the law was originally passed, press reports quoted Ammiano as saying, "You have to play by the rules or shut down."
Again, a supplier in the Castro continued to operate until the fall of 2007 in violation of the law's disability-access requirement. The three got the board to waive the access requirement if it would cause a "hardship" for outlets.
On a larger scale, most suppliers were illegal after June 30, 2007, having failed to meet the deadline for registering with the city, as specified in the original law. The three bailed them out, extending the deadline until March 2008. Even so, only one or two suppliers have so far complied with the extended deadline. The three are now pushing for another extension.
Worst of all, the three continue to insist that the many thousands of customers who buy from the outlets have acute medical problems that cannot be treated otherwise. But anybody who witnesses the scene knows the score. Such disingenuousness in the name of progressive politics only serves to make everybody more cynical.
In effect, Mirkarimi, Daly, and Ammiano have created a form of laissez-faire capitalism for petty drug dealers, which they got the board to impose mostly on marginal neighborhoods. Noise, dirt, congestion, and secondary dealing were the predictable consequences. Worse yet, instances surfaced of money laundering and infiltration by organized crime.
Captain Tim Hettrich of the S.F. Police Department cited an example at a spring 2007 neighborhood meeting in the Haight. He reported that a Bayview warehouse for medical marijuana that he raided was the source for selling to local high school students.
A more egregious case occurred earlier, in the winter of 2006, when the feds raided the city's New Remedies Cooperative, charging the outlet with money-laundering. According to news reports, the feds seized the owner's four sports cars, $125,000 in cash, and 13,000 marijuana plants. He reportedly had deposited over $2 million in his bank account in eight months.
When mice run out of their holes and waive red flags, cats will pounce. And that's what's happening now. In response to abuses, the feds recently sent out menacing letters to all building owners who rent space to medical marijuana outlets. Most of the owners will quickly cave.
In response to the letters, Mirkarimi, Daly, and Ammiano convinced the board to make a blanket condemnation of all raids by the feds. Their resolution makes no reference to the need to pluck the bad apples from the barrel.
It also pretends that their original law is adequate for effective regulation. But in reality, it only requires suppliers to issue a written statement once a year that they are in compliance with necessary regulations. They are exempt from the standard record-keeping required of all other businesses.
This resolution follows earlier ones urging San Francisco police to adopt a hands-off policy when it comes to medical marijuana businesses. If the supes had their way, residents would have no options in dealing with rogue dealers.
Things could have turned out differently. The supes could have created a few, discreet, well-regulated outlets operating in city facilities. These could have provided marijuana only to patients with serious verifiable medical problems untreatable by prescription drugs.
Outlets that failed to comply could have been shut down, instead of repeatedly rewarded. Such facilities would be less likely to trigger a major attack by the feds. They have bigger fish to fry, and limited budgets for doing so.
The only winners of the present system are the rogue dealers who exploited all the loopholes. Along the way, they made a huge killing. They will escape with their profits. Everybody else will lose.
We all deserve better from our elected representatives at City Hall.
Arthur Evans is a writer and neighborhood activist who has lived in the Haight Ashbury for 33 years.