OFFICIALS: POT NOT ACCEPTABLE AT COLISEUM

Authority Members Say Cops Must Bust Smokers Regardless Of Vote Result

OAKLAND -- Busting pot-smoking fans at the Network Associates Coliseum
complex in Oakland should remain a top priority for law enforcement agents
regardless of how city voters feel, Coliseum officials said Thursday.

Members of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority said it would be
too confusing -- and dangerous -- to treat marijuana use at the complex as
a low priority for law enforcement.

Measure Z, an initiative on the Nov. 2 ballot, calls for making private use
of marijuana in one's own residence a low priority for local police.
Initiative backers say the Coliseum Authority's focus on the issue is
irrelevant, since the complex is a public place.

"There needs to be no ambiguousness," said City Councilmember Danny Wan
(Grand Lake-Chinatown), an authority member. "I want to make sure we still
prohibit marijuana use in and around the Coliseum."

Wan, along with Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty, also an authority
member, criticized the initiative during a Thursday meeting as security for
Oakland Raiders games was being discussed.

Both said allowing the initiative to cover the Coliseum complex would
confuse security since it is handled by two different agencies: the Oakland
Police Department and the Alameda County Sheriff's Department.

Since the Sheriff's Department -- a county agency -- would not be bound to
follow the initiative, both said officers and deputies at the complex could
be confused, potentially following different standards.

Further, both argued, making pot smoking a low priority would only invite
more crime to the complex, turning the parking lot into an open drug market.

Measure Z would make the "private use" of marijuana Oakland's lowest law
enforcement priority. It also would set up a platform for the city to tax
and regulate the sale of marijuana for adult use should the state make the
drug legal.

Joe DeVries, campaign manager for Yes on Measure Z, said Wan and Haggerty
were wasting their time trying to draft an exemption to the law for the
Coliseum complex.

If passed, the law would only apply to the private use of marijuana, not
public uses such as smoking pot at the Coliseum complex.

"It's absolutely ridiculous that they would consider this," he said. "It is
only private adult use that we are talking about. I just think they are
being silly."