Supe smells opportunity in pot sales
April 15, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO — The City’s reputation for being “green” could have a whole new twist with a revived proposal for the Department of Public Health to start selling marijuana.
On Tuesday, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi requested that the city attorney draft legislation for a pilot program that would include a city-operated medical marijuana dispensary.
City governments are authorized to distribute marijuana under Proposition 215, a 1996 state ballot measure that legalized medical cannabis. The drug remains illegal under federal law.
Following the ballot measure’s passage, more than 40 pot clubs opened for business in The City, drawing neighborhood complaints. The concerns prompted The City to adopt its first-ever medical marijuana dispensary regulations, which required the businesses to obtain city permits by meeting certain conditions.
About 20 pot clubs remain open.
Mirkarimi, who drafted those regulations, said The City should have decided to distribute medical marijuana “in the first place,” but the federal threat was too great to overcome at the time so he instead opted to regulate the pot club industry.
“I think we are at a tipping point of a new consciousness back in Washington, D.C.,” Mirkarimi said. “Now it’s time for municipalities to step up and to test our authority.”
Wayne Justman, a pot club consultant, said the proposal raises a number of potential problems, including the risk of the federal government withholding federal funds, who will grow the cannabis for The City and how “this is going to be protected [from the federal government] anymore than the dispensaries we have now.”
A draft of legislation is expected to be submitted to the Board of Supervisors in time for its consideration this summer.
IN OTHER ACTION:
In a 6-5 vote, transportation expert David Snyder was appointed to a seat traditionally filled by a labor union member, on the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District board, beating out Local 38 Assistant Business Manager Larry Mazzola Jr.
