BOULDER TARGETS MEDICAL MARIJUANA - AND HEADS SHOULD ROLL

Heads should roll. And for once, let us state whose: David Driskell,
executive director of community planning and sustainability. Charles
Ferro, acting land use review manager. Brian Holmes, zoning
administrator. Jane Brautigan, Boulder city manager.

Messrs. Driskell, Ferro, and Holmes are the City of Boulder
bureaucratic cobblers who wrote the 16-page memo on how to deal with
medical marijuana dispensaries. Ms. Brautigan is the one responsible
for bum's rushing it to the Planning Board - the hearing is tonight
at 6 p.m. at City Hall - and then on to the City Council, where I'm
told it's tentatively scheduled for consideration at next Tuesday's meeting.

The memo is a long list of, what are the words we're looking for
here, ah yes, "options" for "regulating" the dispensaries - or more
plainly, for demonizing, delegitimizing, and driving them out of
business, up to and including an outright ban.

The last would be accomplished by amending Boulder's sales-tax
licensing process to require that all businesses be legal at the
local, state and federal levels. Since medical marijuana is still
illegal at the federal level (it was legalized nine years ago in
Colorado by the passage of a ballot initiative called Amendment 20)
it would effectively ban the dispensaries or the growers who supply
them in Boulder. Clever. Or more accurately, cunning.

That, however, is hardly the only "option" proposed. According to the
story on the memo in Tuesday's Daily Camera:

"The restrictions could include rules for how close dispensaries can
operate to schools, parks, day-care centers and residences; requiring
security systems in dispensaries; requiring background checks on all
employees; prohibiting the sale of marijuana at locations that also
sell liquor; requiring dispensaries to keep a list of all patients to
determine whether their quantity complies with the law; and requiring
dispensaries to report any criminal activity to police.

"The city also could choose to prohibit people from using medical
marijuana inside the dispensaries; prohibit the hanging of signs for
dispensaries; and require all patients to be notified that the use of
medical marijuana is a violation of federal law and that smoking or
ingesting the drug impairs a person's ability to drive or operate machinery."

If some of these "options" sound vaguely familiar, it may be because
a lot of them have been used by anti-abortion activists to ban
abortion or by gun control activists to ban guns - under the guise of
adopting "reasonable" or "commonsense" regulations, of course. Of course.

So what prompted this memo and the rush to action?

Well, at the end of the last city council meeting Councilman Ken
Wilson asked the city staff to look into regulating the medical marijuana.

Wilson says he asked the staff to look into regulating the
dispensaries because he has been approached by some Boulder
businessmen who were concerned about having dispensaries as their neighbors.

He added that he voted for medical marijuana nine years ago and
doesn't want to ban the dispensaries, but just wants to regulate
them. I have no reason to doubt him.

He also said he thought the Camera blew the issue all out of proportion.

I don't think so. Heath Urie, the Camera reporter who wrote the
story, is an experienced reporter. I read the original memo, and my
reading of it is essentially the same as his. It's a memo with
agendas, and they aren't hidden.

So what prompted this burst of bureaucratic busybodyism? Fears of
violence, robberies, sales of marijuana to minors, among other things.

Stop the presses! This is a Boulder Weekly News Alert! This just in!

An exhaustive investigation has revealed that a number of legitimate
Boulder businesses are engaged in the sale of narcotics, amphetamines
and a number of other dangerous drugs. Some of this drug activity
occurs near schools, parks and day-care centers. Some of stores stay
open 24/7, and brazenly and openly conclude drug deals in the
presence ofminors.

A review of police records reveals there have been repeated instances
of burglaries and armed robberies at the stores by persons trying to
get drugs. A partial list of the offending businesses include:
Walgreens, Pharmaca, Safeway and King Soopers.

The point is that the reasons the city memo presents for effectively
re-criminalizing medical marijuana are things that can be problems
for ordinary drug stores - and they are easily dealt with.

Violence, eh? If 70 years of experience with pot prohibition has
shown anything, it's that virtually all of the violence and crime
related to marijuana flows from the prohibition, not the drug.

The assertion by the city staff that the city must act to prevent
violence - followed by a list of "options" that, if adopted, are
almost guaranteed to worsen it by resurrecting the sort of
prohibition that Amendment 20 was intended to prevent - betrays the
corruption and dishonesty of the exercise.

Should medical marijuana dispensaries be regulated? Of course they should.

But the objectives of the regulatory scheme should be essentially the
same objectives as the regulations surrounding conventional
pharmacies. And the process of creating a regulatory scheme should be
the same that Boulder generally uses with controversial issues - one
that involves all the stakeholders, including dispensary operators,
growers, consumers and property owners, among others.

Chances are the city staff will claim it has to act quickly to
regulate medical marijuana because dispensaries are starting to open
in Boulder.

Really now? Amendment 20 was passed nine freaking years ago. Both the
city staff and city councils have had nine years to consider their
"options" for regulating medical marijuana - but have deliberately
chosen to avoid the issue like the plague. They have a lot of nerve.

There is so much hypocrisy in city government regarding marijuana
generally and medical marijuana in particular that City Hall should
be declared a Super Fund site.