OAKSTERDAM COUNTDOWN

Any day now the Oakland city manager will announce which four of the eight
(or nine) downtown cannabis dispensaries are "legal." The other operations
will have to move, or close down, or be closed down by the sheriff, or
somehow challenge the legality of the recently passed ordinance limiting
the number of clubs.

It was left up to Assistant City Manager Larry Carroll to decide which
dispensaries best serve Oakland's interests. Carroll has toured the clubs
and gotten input from the Fire Dept. and other relevant agencies. He
doesn't have an enviable task. All the dispensaries represent somebody's
risk, sweat, labor, and capital (not to mention hopes and dreams). C-Notes
fears for the Lemon Drop, a pleasant Telegraph Ave. ice-cream parlor and
coffee bar that's patronized by city workers at lunchtime and has a
dispensary downstairs with some first-rate paintings on the walls and a
floor of one-inch hexagonal tile. (It used to be the ladies' room in the
basement of a Montgomery Ward department store.) The Lemon Drop has a
"disabilities issue"-the staircase connecting cafZ and dispensary. Owner
Mark Belote also worries that the county department of public health might
not favor "dispensary" status for an establishment that serves food (which
would also rule out the popular Bulldog, on Broadway). Belote, a
sophisticated, middle-aged gent who used to be the butler at Bill Graham's
Mill Valley estate, says he can't make the requisite renovations without
assurance that the city will let him stay in business. And he hopes the
health officials will recognize that his dispensary and his cafZ are
separate operations in physically separate areas. "I'm the only
independent," he says hopefully. "Everybody else has at least one other
location..."

The biggest and most successful dispensary in Oakland, known as The Third
Floor, is financed by a businessman who never feigned an affinity for
marijuana. In the past two years Mr. Big -who made his original stake
running gambling houses-has opened dispensaries in San Francisco, West
Hollywood, and Ukiah. Almost as a function of market dynamics, he has
become a de facto wholesaler. Growers want to deal with the minimum number
of clubs/buyers. They offer a price break to dispensary operators buying
large quantities. Those buying large quantities don't always need that
much, and re-sell to other clubs. Next thing you know, you're Mr. Big.

Some "movement" activists have long expressed concern that Mr. Big would
draw the heat Last week KTVU's hidden cameras focused on youths emerging
from the Third Floor with large paper bags -obviously containing cuttings
in 4" or 1-gallon pots-while a breathless narrator asserted, as if it were
a fact, that the cannabis clubs in Oakland would sell you as much marijuana
as you could carry away. The implication was that the bags contained lbs.

An OPD lieutenant named Paulson was shown expressing outrage as he viewed
KTVU's hidden-camera footage on a monitor. (Is there a more drab clichZ of
'gotcha' journalism?). "Look, he's coming out of the club... His partners
are going to the car!..." The camera lingered on a black working man in a
battered old heap carefully examining a baggie of herb that probably cost
all his discretionary income for the month. Cut to Police Chief Richard
Word viewing the tape and expressing maximum outrage. "They should both go
to jail!" And "Those people are in for a rude awakening..." Sometimes the
best we can hope for from our politicians is that they be lying. Like Kerry
saying "We must stay the course" in Iraq.

PS 5/28 And the winners are: The Bulldog (1739 Broadway), CARE (19th &
Telegraph), Compassionate Cariegvers (better known as The Third Floor, 1714
Telegraph), and Oakland Compassionate Healing (578 W. Grand).

NIDA Wants You!

An experienced, successful Mendocino cannabis cultivator was delighted to
read on Craig's List that the U.S. government is seeking to hire someone
capable of "Production, Analysis, and Distribution of Cannabis and
Marijuana Cigarettes." Understandably reluctant to forward his resume to
the contracting office (the National Institute on Drug Abuse), the
cultivator asked C-Notes to make further inquiries.

As we suspected the "presolicitation notice" was for the contract that NIDA
awards every five years to Mahmoud El Sohly, who oversees the cannabis
patch at the University of Mississippi. Here's the official pitch: "NIDA
is soliciting proposals from qualified organizations having the capability
to grow, harvest, extract, analyze, store, prepare marijuana cigarettes and
related products, extract purified delta-9-THC and other cannabinoids, work
on drug development, and distribute cannabis, and marijuana cigarettes and
related products to NIDA grantees and other researchers to support basic
and clinical research. The offeror must possess the necessary field or
growing facility, laboratory space, instrumentation and experience to
conduct the work. Appropriate security approved by DEA for growing, and
manufacturing of marijuana cigarettes, storage facilities and DEA Schedule
I registration for Marijuana and THC are essential...

"Interested organizations must submit organizational data and background,
qualifications of professional personnel, and specific experience in the
area of this project. It is anticipated that a five-year incrementally
funded completed contract will be awarded through this procurement with
optional quantities for additional growing and manufacturing. RFP [Request
for Proposals] No. NO1DA-5-7746 will be available electronically on or
about June 7, 2004... Responses to the RFP will be due approximately 45
calendar days thereafter."

NIDA spokeswoman Jan Lipkin did not return a call in connection with this
story.

The "Treatment" Racket

At the end of the Clinton era, the head of the Office of National Drug
Control Policy, Four Star Gen. Barry "Shoot 'Em in the Back" McCaffrey,
went to work as a shill for the Phoenix House chain of "treatment
facilities," founded and run by Mitchell S. Rosenthal. Dr. Rosenthal is
arguably the man who, in all America, makes the most money off marijuana
prohibition. Phoenix House sells "treatment" to the inexhaustible
population of marijuana users who, without it, couldn't keep their jobs, or
stay in school, or out of jail. Mitch passes as an intellectual but in
fact he's a close personal friend of Tina Brown's.

Gen. McCaffrey and Dr. Rosenthal published a self-serving op-ed piece in
the Wall St. Journal May 25 that made six "recommendations to legislators
now considering how best to change the [New York state drug] laws:

" Reform should ensure the treatment of as many nonviolent offenders as
possible.

" Sentences for drug offenses should be reduced, but not to the point that
they no longer provide a meaningful incentive for defendants to accept
long-term residential treatment.

" In-prison treatment should be mandated for offenders with a history of
drug abuse who are not appropriate candidates for community-based treatment
- -or are unwilling to accept it.

" Although other, less restrictive treatment options may occasionally be
appropriate, mandated treatment for offenders should involve no less than
12 months of residential treatment, followed by 6 months of outpatient
aftercare.

" Penalties for quitting treatment or failing to comply with a treatment
regimen should be imposed swiftly and automatically.

" Adequate levels of community-based treatment must be available statewide,
and providing treatment to drug law offenders should create no additional
costs for local government."

May the lash be no harsher than it takes to drive customers to our door,
and may the state pick up the whole tab... Liberalism in a nutshell.