Aiming to rid San Diego of illegal pot shops, city officials are partnering on a new campaign urging people to use only the 15 medical marijuana dispensaries that have received permits to operate legally.
The most effective way to put the roughly 20 to 30 illegal shops out of business is to deprive them of their customers and their profits, City Attorney Jan Goldsmith said Thursday.
And he said that’s an important goal because the illegal shops don’t pay taxes, have no security cameras, have no product testing and often have employees with felony convictions and illegal guns inside.
The campaign, a partnership with a coalition formed recently by the legal dispensaries, will include advertisements and a special insignia on storefronts that identifies the dispensary as city-approved.
Goldsmith also suggested the city should consider loosening its regulations to allow the opening of more legal shops, which follow strict security protocols and must test their products for quality and potency and have opened only in locations deemed appropriate by the city.
“They pay their taxes – they regulate their products,” he said. “They work with police to guarantee a safe environment for their customers.”
In contrast, Goldsmith said the illegal pot shops flout city regulations and put customers in danger.
“They operate outside the law, and with a flagrant disrespect to their neighbors, to our City Council and mayor, and often to the judges who order them to close their doors,” said Goldsmith, urging people not to buy marijuana there. “It’s sort of like jumping into a swimming pool when you don’t know if there’s water or not.”
While Goldsmith has shut down about 300 illegal pot shops across the city since 2011, strong consumer demand continues to prompt others to open.
And it can take months to shut down illegal shops because the 1996 legalization of medical marijuana by California voters prevents the city from simply raiding them.
Instead, city officials must declare the shops in violation of zoning laws and then pursue civil or criminal remedies based on those violations alone, not the illegal sale of drugs.
However, if consumers stop buying marijuana at illegal shops the strong financial incentive would go away and fewer of them would open, Goldsmith said.
That’s the goal of the new campaign, which has been dubbed “Buy Safe Buy Legal” by the dispensary coalition.
“Maybe the biggest tool is the consumer and working with the legal industry,” Goldsmith said. “It’s a big step. For too long, people who need medical marijuana have had few tools for separating the good guys from the bad guys.”
The campaign will help consumers do that, particularly with the special insignia identifying legal shops, he said.
“Anyone who misuses this or counterfeits it – illegally, improperly uses it – and is an illegal operation, we consider that illegal use to be a serious criminal offense and people will be prosecuted and we’ll ask for jail time,” Goldsmith said.
Operators of the legal dispensaries praised Goldsmith and the new campaign, which they are paying for.
They stressed that each legal dispensary spent hundreds of thousands of dollars complying with regulations and securing city permits under a 2014 city ordinance allowing legal shops for the first time.
“We have a lot of incentives to follow these rules and stay on the right side of the law compared to the fly-by-night collectives that just set up so they can get shut down,” said Alida Grahame-Lehman, manager of the Point Loma Patient Consumer Cooperative. “They are prepared to be raided by law enforcement and they’re designed to literally tear down and pack up into a moving van.”
One hurdle for the campaign is that only eight of the 15 approved dispensaries have opened, leaving most neighborhoods in the city without convenient access to legal marijuana.
Phil Rath, executive director of the United Medical Marijuana Coalition, said many of the seven approved dispensaries that haven’t opened yet will do so in coming months as they complete city inspections and tenant improvements.
Ads for the campaign feature only 14 of the 15 permitted dispensaries because one got final approval just recently in late August.
Critics say the city’s regulations are too strict and that 15 permitted dispensaries isn’t enough to meet strong demand.
Goldsmith said the city’s process is too expensive and takes too long, and suggested the City Council should consider loosening the rules to allow more legal shops.
But he warned that they would need to be careful not to allow dispensaries to damage neighborhoods.
“It has to be well-thought-out and it has to be careful because you want to protect your neighborhoods,” he said. “If you don’t protect your neighborhoods there’s going to be an outcry against these things.”
Goldsmith, who hasn’t taken a position on a Nov. 8 ballot measure that would legalize recreational marijuana in California, said approval of the measure – Proposition 64 – wouldn’t help solve the problem of illegal pot shops.
He said the city would still have the power to regulate where dispensaries could open and how they operate, so there would still be a risk that illegal shops would flout those rules.
The eight legal dispensaries that have opened are at 2335 Roll Drive in Otay Mesa, 3452 Hancock St. in the Midway District, 658 E. San Ysidro Blvd., 2405 Harbor Drive in Barrio Logan, 7128 Miramar Road in Mira Mesa, 5125 Convoy St. in Kearny Mesa, 10671 Roselle St. in Torrey Pines/Sorrento Valley and 3703 Camino Del Rio South in Mission Valley.
The next two expected to open are located at 1028 Buenos Avenue in Linda Vista and 3385 Sunrise Avenue, just southeast of downtown in Stockton. And a second dispensary in Mission Valley at 3455 Camino Del Rio South is further along in the process of getting permits to open than the other four that have been approved.
News Moderator: Katelyn Baker 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: San Diego Steering Pot Users Toward Legal Dispensaries
Author: David Garrick
Contact: (800) 533-8830
Photo Credit: John Gibbins
Website: The San Diego Union-Tribune