Eight months after Berkeley voters approved Measure T, the city’s Medical Cannabis Commission now has a full roster and can begin the process of implementing the items established in the ballot initiative when the commission meets on July 21 for the first time since its reconstitution.
Approved by voters in a 64 percent vote last November, Measure T allows the city to permit six new 30,000-square-foot cultivation sites to open in the manufacturing district of West Berkeley, as well as a fourth dispensary, while also calling for the reconstitution of the commission. But the commission itself is responsible for making recommendations to the Berkeley City Council for putting the words of the initiative into practice.
Since the election, several meetings have been scheduled and subsequently canceled as the commission has delayed its first meeting, waiting for each member to be appointed. Five of the nine commission members were appointed in the last month.
The measure also states that at least one commission member must be a member of a dispensary, a collective that is not a dispensary and a cultivator who is “not primarily associated with a single dispensary and provides medical cannabis to more than one dispensary.”
But before the commission can begin to determine exact locations of the six new cultivation centers and the additional dispensary, it must first establish a framework that can make these new “cannabusinesses” possible — including a licensing process for new growth facilities and a set of operational and safety guidelines.
“Before they make the rules for what the process will be, I think we need to figure out if there’s people on the commission who are planning to apply to get either a cultivation permit or a dispensary permit — to what extent are they allowed to be involved in creating the rules,” said Councilmember Kriss Worthington.
But a recent letter from the U.S. Department of Justice may give the commission pause as it proceeds. The June 29 memo, sent to U.S. Attorneys, strongly cautions state and local governments from violating the Controlled Substances Act through commercial use and distribution of marijuana for “purported medical purposes.”
Stewart Jones, the commission member appointed by Councilmember Jesse Arreguin, said when the commission meets, it will need to consider the tenor established in the memo.
“Ultimately, I think we have to wait and see how this policy is applied,” Arreguin said in regard to the memo. “It should give us caution in how we proceed with implementing our city law.”
Also threatened by potentially increased scrutiny from the federal government is Berkeley’s Measure S, which was also approved by voters last November and places a 2.5 percent tax on for-profit “cannabusinesses” and a $25 per square foot tax up to 3,000 square feet, with each following square foot taxed at $10, on nonprofits.
Jones said that the city should also take a look at how the issue of establishing large-scale cultivation centers plays out in Oakland, which had suffered a serious setback when Melinda Haag, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, warned that such actions would not be condoned by the federal government.
But Jones said the memo should not halt the city’s progress on medical marijuana.
“It can’t just stop at this point,” he said.
Sarah Mohamed of The Daily Californian contributed to this report.
J.D. Morris is an assistant news editor.
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(The author has 35 years’ consulting experience, has taught
at UC Berkeley (Cal)
where he observed the culture & way senior management work)
Cal. Chancellor Birgeneau ($500,000 salary)
has forgotten that he is a public servant, steward of the public money, not
overseer of his own fiefdom (these are not isolated examples): recruits (uses
California tax $) out of state $50,000 tuition students that displace qualified
Californians from public university education; spends $7,000,000 + for
consultants to do his & many vice chancellors jobs (prominent East Coast university accomplishing same 0 cost); pays
ex Michigan governor $300,000 for lectures; in procuring a $3,000,000 consulting firm he failed to receive
proposals from other firms; Latino enrollment drops while out of state
jumps 2010; tuition to Return on
Investment drops below top 10; Birgeneau all employees meeting – only 50
attend; visits to Cal down 20%; NCAA places basketball program on probation,
absence institutional control.
It’s all shameful. There is no justification for such
practices by a steward of the public trust. Absolutely none.
Birgeneau’s practices will continue indefinitely. Governor
Brown, UC Board of Regents Chair Lansing, President Yudof must do a better job
of vigorously enforcing stringent oversight than has been done in the past over
Chancellors like Birgeneau who use the campus as their fiefdom.
On June 17, 1971, President Nixon told Congress that “if we cannot destroy the drug menace in America, then it will surely destroy us.” After forty years of trying to destroy “the drug menace in America” we still *haven’t* been able to destroy it and it still *hasn’t* destroyed us. Four decades is long enough to realize that on this important issue, President Nixon was wrong! All actions taken as a result of his invalid and paranoid assumptions (e.g. the federal marijuana prohibition) should be ended immediately!
It makes no sense for taxpayers to fund the federal marijuana prohibition when it *doesn’t* prevent people from using marijuana and it *does* make criminals incredibly wealthy and incite the Mexican drug cartels to murder thousands of people every year.
We need legal adult marijuana sales in supermarkets, gas stations and pharmacies for exactly the same reason that we need legal alcohol and tobacco sales – to keep unscrupulous black-market criminals out of our neighborhoods and away from our children. Marijuana must be made legal to sell to adults everywhere that alcohol and tobacco are sold.
“There’s something extraordinarily perverse when we’re so concerned about preventing addicts from having access to drugs that we destroy the lives of many times more people, either through untreated pain or other drug war damage”.