Yes, short-term memory is challenging for many of you. But try extra hard thinking back to the not-so-distant past when marijuana legalization in California seemed to be a lock. Alas, Prop 19 was smoked in the statewide election earlier this month.
Is it possible that the public's sudden lack of, um, taste for the herb has emboldened our public officials to declare war on the recreational version's too-legit-to-quit cousin, medical marijuana?
Let's go to the scoreboard . . .
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- The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to ban medical marijuana dispensaries in the unincorporated portions of Orange County.
- The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted this week to have its attorneys write an ordinance banning dispensaries
in the unincorporated portions of that county. - The Long Beach City Council imposed stricter regulations earlier this month that resulted in nine clinics being forced to close.
- Despite previous approval from Tustin's planning commission, a hydroponics and
indoor gardening store was forbidden by the City Council from opening in a small, difficult-to-lease space in Old Town Tustin earlier this month.
The OC Bored of Stupes vote was 4-1, with Shawn “The Bong” Nelson casting the lone dissent. Supervisor John “No” Moorlach suggested patients simply cross the border to Long Beach to get their meds. So much for sticking up for small businesses.
The LA County vote was also 4-1, although it's unclear if Shawn
“The Bong” donned a disguise to cast that lone dissent–or if “No”
Moorlach suggested patients in the neighboring county simply cross borders into Ventura or San Bernardino counties to get their meds.
Hopefully, no one on the LBC council suggested patients of the shuttered dispensaries simply cross into unincorporated LA County because . . . DOH!
Simple movement was also on the mind of simpleton Tustin Councilman “Dear” John Nielsen, who suggested the hydroponics store he considered incompatible with Old Town relocate to the industrial part of the city.
You know, that place where sick people always go for their health, gardening and pollution-inhalation needs. It's one-stop shopping, baby!
By the way, the council based its no
votes on reports that indicated pot smoking might rise in residential areas and a person was
once stabbed near a hydroponics shop in Fountain Valley.
Such logic, of
course, discounts the fact that childhood obesity has risen in Tustin's residential areas, yet the
council has no problem allowing high-fat merchants to clog every spare inch of adjacent boulevards.
And, earlier this year, there was a stabbing in a residential neighborhood about a half block from a Tustin child development center. My colleague R. Scott Moxley has provided this paper award-winning coverage of the 1996 Super Bowl Sunday stabbing of Thien Minh Ly at Tustin High School.
Near as I can tell, no one has suggested moving high schools and child development centers to the industrial part of Tustin.
It's enough to make one's head ache. Pass the bong, Shawn!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.