POT DISPENSARIES GOOD FOR CITIES, TOO, GROUP SAYS

SAN DIEGO - A handful of Northern California city leaders and a
medical marijuana advocacy group held a press conference Thursday in
San Diego to say cities and counties would benefit by creating
dispensaries where patients could get their legal pot.

The city officials were gathered at the San Diego Convention Center
to take part in the League of California Cities 108th annual conference.

But holding the dispensary news conference in San Diego had special
significance, said Steph Sherer of Americans for Safe Access, the
medical marijuana advocacy group that coordinated the event.

San Diego County has become ground zero in a long-simmering tussle
over California's 10-year-old, voter-approved medical marijuana law,
the Compassionate Use Act.

In December, San Diego County supervisors filed a precedent-setting
lawsuit to try to overturn the Compassionate Use Act. The court
battle is slated to begin in November. Supervisors argue that
California's law should be superseded by federal law, which says all
marijuana use is illegal.

In addition, the San Diego County district attorney's office has
helped federal drug agents essentially "shut down" all local medical
marijuana "dispensaries" - even though state Attorney General Bill
Lockyer said local law enforcement were not obligated to help enforce
federal law.

Finally, the region's second largest government - the city of San
Diego - hasn't acted on whether it wants to create regulations to
allow medical marijuana dispensaries to operate inside the city's limits.

Sherer directed Thursday's sparsely attended press conference at the
San Diego Convention Center downtown.

She said the group hoped that San Diego City Council members would
still create dispensary regulations that would give local patients a
place to buy marijuana safely, rather than "forcing them into the streets."

"Our hope is that San Diego City Council moves forward despite what
the county is doing, and show that they are more compassionate than
our county," Sherer said.

The roughly 20-minute press conference featured testimony from
Northern California city council leaders of cities that had already
created regulations allowing marijuana dispensaries to operate - and
featured the release of a report that studied several dispensaries in
the San Francisco Bay area.

Oakland Councilwoman Desley Brooks; Councilman Lee Pierce, of Santa
Rosa; and Councilman Mike Rotkin, of Santa Cruz, each said their
cities benefited by allowing dispensaries to operate.

They said creating the dispensaries had not increased crime as
critics feared and had actually decreased street drug trafficking,
improved security in surrounding areas, and sponsored economic growth
in some spots.

Rotkin, a five-term councilman and former mayor of Santa Cruz, said
the city had created regulations allowing for two dispensaries over
the last 18 months - making sure to create zoning that would keep
them away from schools residential neighborhoods.

He said residents howled "not in my backyard" when the issue was
debated but that the dispensaries had proved very successful.

"Literally, in 18 months of operation," Rotkin said, "we've not had a
single complaint from anybody about either of the two dispensaries.
The end result is that the very same people who started out very
skeptical and very critical ... have all become active supporters."

Sherer and Amanda Reiman, a postdoctoral fellow at the UC Berkeley
School of Social Welfare, also introduced Reiman's 19-page study,
"Medical Cannabis Dispensing Collectives and Local Regulation."

Reiman, who is also a medical marijuana user and a member of the
Cannabis Consumers Campaign, said she visited and studied seven
medical marijuana dispensaries in Berkeley and San Francisco. Reiman
said in her report that they not only gave patients a safe place to
get the drug they needed to control their pain or ease their
symptoms, but that it combated crime. Reiman said the dispensaries
had their own security, which discouraged criminal activity in the
immediate areas; and street drug sales decreased, although the report
did not offer statistics to back that assertion.

However, Reiman said the Bay Area dispensaries could also serve as
models for other dispensaries around the state in the services they offered.

"The cannabis (selling) is a very small part of what a lot of these
dispensaries are offering," she said. "They include peer counseling,
substance abuse treatment services, and also palliative care services
- - like massage, arts and crafts, day trips, cannabis-related services
such as legal advice."

Meanwhile, a couple of San Diego County residents who have been
deeply involved in the recent controversies said they hoped that the
city and county of San Diego would help medical marijuana patients.

Wendy Christakes, 29, of La Mesa, said she had been using medical
marijuana to help ease the spasms and pain of a broken back in 2002.
But she said she's had to quit using the drug since the San Diego
County district attorney's office and federal drug officers cracked
down on dispensaries.

Christakes said she can't grow her own marijuana at home because she
has two small children and doesn't feel it would be safe.

Since she could no longer get marijuana, Christakes said: "I've had
to go to the hospital and get morphine injections, due to the pain.

"And they've given me prescriptions for sedatives and Class Three
narcotics which I've had to take," she said. "I'd really prefer not
to. They damage your liver and kidneys. But unfortunately my back
goes into severe spasms."

Jeff Meyer, 32, said he ran a medical marijuana dispensary in
Clairemont until federal drug officers threatened to send him "to
federal jail."

Meyer said he was also a medical marijuana user, and got into the
dispensary business because he had been to several local
dispensaries, and thought they could be done "more professionally."
He said he preferred to keep his illness confidential.

He also said he had struggled since the county cracked down on dispensaries.

"We're struggling to get by," he said. "I opened up a smoke shop
right next door to keep most of my employees. What I doing now is
focusing efforts on working with the (San Diego) City Council to
enact regulations and guidelines (that would allow dispensaries)."