40,000 POT USERS IN THE CITY? GIVE OR TAKE 39,952

Does Redding have 40,000 "medical" marijuana smokers?

Or are there a mere 48 in all of Shasta County?

The first number emerged last week from a Redding police survey of
the city's 17 collectives serving the Proposition 215 trade. Adding
up their total membership, the police came to a sum of 40,000 -
nearly half the city's population. That shows either an extraordinary
level of marijuana use or, more likely, a wanton disregard of a city
ordinance requiring medical-marijuana users to be members of only one
co-op. (And while there's an argument for shopping around, those who
find the ordinance oppressive should keep in mind that Redding's
rules are, overall, fairly relaxed. Many California cities continue
to use zoning to bar storefront marijuana sales altogether - whatever
the criminal law says.)

But if the hypothetical 40,000 pot smokers make for an alarming but
dubious figure, the Shasta County Health and Human Services
Department can offer reassurance of a kind. It has on file a mere 48
medical-marijuana users registered in the entire county.

A 2003 law known as Senate Bill 420 set up a Medical Marijuana
Program under which counties could issue official identification
cards to bona-fide patients. The goal was to protect users from
unwarranted legal problems.

But the cost, the hassle and the privacy concerns have kept the
county-issued ID program from catching on. The total last year, the
peak since the program's inception, was under 13,000 statewide.
Shasta County has never had more than 51 registered patients.

Asked for his assessment of the "real" number of nominally medical
users, county Alcohol and Drug Programs chief David Reiten, who
oversees drug treatment as well as the medical-marijuana registry,
would only say: "All I can be sure of is that it's more than 48 and
less than 40,000. I wouldn't even venture a guess at the actual number."

The shortage of reliable data is a shame. Proposition 215 and
especially the relaxed federal enforcement guidelines under the Obama
administration have dramatically changed not just the law, but social
norms when it comes to marijuana. For good or ill, it's vital to
understand how that change is affecting our community.

But for now, guessing is all we've got.