MARIJUANA OUTLETS HAVE RISKS FOR ESCONDIDO

We risk suffering the penalties under the law of unintended
consequences, primarily in the area of law enforcement, if we try to
allow the use of marijuana for any purpose in our city. What would be
intended as a means to provide compassionate care for the seriously
ill would more likely add to the already daunting task of controlling
the use of dangerous drugs in our community.

This is not biased conjecture. The California Police Chiefs
Association has identified numerous problems relating to these
dispensaries where they operate.

They include, but are not limited to burglaries and even robberies of
dispensaries and patrons who leave those facilities as well as
loitering and people smoking marijuana in the parking lots after
purchasing the substance.

There also is the problem of people using fake documents to obtain
marijuana under false pretenses. And, it's entirely possible that
some dispensaries would choose to ignore the medical criteria and
sell marijuana to whomever comes through their doors.

Locally, even without legalizing its use for medicinal purposes, our
own police department has already seen more cases of people using
medical reasons as an excuse for cultivating and using marijuana.
Among other things, our department predicts that marijuana
dispensaries will adversely affect police patrol time and resources.
Like any city, we need to find ways to reduce our police department's
workload, not add to it.

Finally, allowing any use of marijuana sends a mixed message to our
community's youth. It says, in effect, that using marijuana is not
really dangerous after all if people who are sick can use it.
Certainly, there's more to the issue; but it's hard to communicate
subtle exceptions like this in a public education program.

The message has to be clear and consistent if we're to educate our
young people about not using dangerous drugs. I'd rather we be
perfectly clear about the dangers of using any illegal drug under any
circumstance than dilute the effort by trying to explain exceptions.
It's a dangerous drug, period.

While I understand marijuana has some medicinal value in treating
seriously ill people, the problems our city would face in trying to
legally control the availability of an illegal substance under any
condition far outweigh whatever medical benefits there would be. We
need to be concerned about the greater public good - protecting the
entire community - not just the interests of a very few people who
would need the drug and certainly not the people who would abuse its
sale or use.

For that reason, we need to use whatever regulatory powers we have to
curb the presence of illegal drugs in our city. Adopting the
ordinance I've introduced to permanently ban medical marijuana
dispensaries is one means by which we can do so.