COME TO THE DANK SIDE

Robbie Waters Has New Job As Medical-Pot Consultant

Former Sacramento City Councilman Robbie Waters is now lobbying local
governments on behalf of medical marijuana.

Robbie Waters has tried his hand at many, many things. The 75-year-old
was a cop for two decades, and the sheriff of Sacramento County for
four years. He still runs his own hardware store and framing business
in the Pocket, an area he represented for 16 years as a Sacramento
City Council member.

His legacy is literally cemented in Sacramento-in the name of the
Robbie Waters Pocket-Greenhaven Library and on plaques affixed to many
other buildings around town.

But Waters' new gig is a bit surprising. Not so much that he'd become
a political consultant, but that he'd become a political consultant
for marijuana.

For years the lone Republican on the Sacramento City Council, Waters
was skeptical about medical pot, to say the least. "I was 100 percent
opposed to medical marijuana in the city of Sacramento," he said.

In fact, it was Waters who dropped the dime on one medical-pot
dispensary on 16th Street a few years back. After getting complaints
from neighbors, he called up the Drug Enforcement Administration,
leading to a raid and seizures of 22 pounds of green buds and nearly
$50,000 in cash.

But medical pot is legal, according to state law. And Waters, like his
fellow council members, struggled to find a balance between patients'
rights and the rights of other citizens to live without the crime and
nuisance that dispensaries can bring.

Over time, Waters developed a friendship with medical-pot activist
Ryan Landers and got more familiar with some clinics in town.

And he says that he came to think of dispensaries, some of them at
least, as legitimate businesses. "Little by little, I started to lose
my prejudice that everybody out there is a criminal," Waters recalled.

Waters was a major force behind Sacramento's medical-pot ordinance,
which eventually opened the door for city taxation of weed, at a
whopping $1.5 million in revenue a year. In the process, he also got
to know pot lobbyist Max Del Real, another major player in the compromise.

When Waters failed to make the runoff election against two well-funded
challengers for his city council seat, Del Real recruited him as a
paid consultant and the two have been traveling the state, trying to
export what they call Sacramento's "model ordinance" to other towns.

Waters says he doesn't partake, medically or otherwise, and he's still
strongly opposed to legalization of pot for recreational use.

But the two men say it was Waters' testimony that helped break the tie
on the Chico City Council and led to approval of two medical-marijuana
dispensaries there. "The Sacramento model is being looked at all over
the state. I'm proud of what we were able to do there," Waters told
the council members in Chico.

Waters also testified to the Planning Commission in Stockton on behalf
of a similar ordinance there. And of a recent trip to the city of
Costa Mesa, Del Real said, "They love him in Orange County. He's one
of them!"

Del Real is hopeful that Waters can now help persuade the more
conservative Sacramento County Board of Supervisors to adopt an
ordinance similar to Sacramento city's. It wasn't looking so good at
press time. The board was considering an urgency ordinance that was
much more restrictive than the city's-for example, banning sale of
"edibles" for users who don't want to (or can't) smoke marijuana, and
only allowing dispensaries in areas zoned for industrial use, often
not well-served by public transit.

Still, if Waters can change his mind on the issue of medical pot,
perhaps he can change some other minds, too.

"Robbie Waters is standing up saying medical cannabis is good for the
community," Del Real said. "This is the same guy who four years ago
was calling the feds."