COUNCIL SHOULD RESPECT LAW, REJECT POT DISPENSARY

Hollister council members should respect federal law and disapprove
of a medicinal marijuana shop opening in an industrial park near the airport.

Local officials throughout California are overstepping their
jurisdictional boundaries in authorizing these operations. Not only
are they a front for legal, recreational use by most of their
customers, but they also blatantly violate federal law.

This debate should stretch no further than a simple interpretation of
the law. And there really is no room for interpretation - nor should
there be. We advise Hollister City Council members to cite their own
zoning laws that prohibit any operations in violation of state or
federal law and turn away the Purple Cross Rx organization that has
indicated interest in opening a shop here.

Since when did a local municipality have the right to trump federal
law? This debate, which is swirling as of late with several
communities throughout the state considering laws related to
medicinal marijuana shops, shows a particularly convoluting
consequence of the California proposition system.

State voters in 1996 passed the ballot measure to legalize medicinal
marijuana with 56 percent approval. Supporters of the measure, and a
majority of California voters, were ill-advised in believing the
all-mighty and ultra-flawed proposition system gave citizens the
right to revolt against federal authority.

Federal law classifies marijuana as an illegal narcotic. It would be
no different from a legal perspective, though much less acceptable,
if a California lobbying effort succeeded in getting a proposition
passed legalizing cocaine, also classified as an illegal narcotic.
It's rather surprising that the United States Supreme Court hasn't
taken up and overturned the state's legalization of medicinal marijuana.

That's where the legal, moral and medical debate should occur - in
Washington, D.C.

In Hollister, as long as the U.S. government and Federal Drug
Administration view it as an illegal drug, council members can save a
lot of time and energy by taking the discussion here no further than
the city zoning code that stresses a respect for the law.