Going to pot

It was a good thing that the discussion about Pot Clubs was continued at the last City Council meeting, given that the already hefty agenda ended up in a meeting that ended in the wee hours of the morning.    However, the extra time has focused the East Bay Express’ laser like focus back on Alameda.   And this time, it’s about Medical Marijuana dispensaries and Alameda’s plan to ban them from our fair burg.

To quickly recap, the City placed an emergency moratorium on the City prohibiting any new pot clubs from opening in the City until this issue was resolved.   The moratorium was in response to the Purple Elephant opening on Webster Street after failing to properly fill out a form completely, claiming that they were selling “General Misc.” items as opposed to specifically stating that they were selling  marijuana.   Apparently though, when a pot club fails to include required information on a form they get holy hell rained down upon them, but when a Councilmember does the same, they get an hour and a half discussion on a non-issue.  But I digress.

So the City staff drafted language banning all pot club from Alameda forever and brought this to the Planning Board to approve.   The PB said, yeah, I don’t think so and kicked it back to the City Council to give some policy direction as to whether they wanted an ordinance limiting pot clubs or an outright ban.

City staff has used the justification that (1) we don’t have the space because no one wants a pot club to go up next door and (2) pot clubs bring crime.   Robert Gammon of the EBX begs to differ:

The police departments in both cities [Berkeley and Oakland] say medical pot facilities now pose virtually no problems nor are they diverting precious resources away from crime-fighting. “We haven’t seen any issues involving medical marijuana dispensaries,” said Oakland police spokeswoman Holly Joshi. “They’re not generating a lot of calls for service,” said Berkeley police spokesman Andrew Frankel. “And they’re not a drain on resources.”

…

“The problem is that there’s a perception among people that the dispensaries attract crime,” Bates said, “but that hasn’t been our experience.”

“I can’t remember getting a single phone call from anybody about crime or other problems with the dispensary in my district,” said Worthington, who said many residents and business owners expressed fears before the dispensary opened. “But I have gotten calls from people who said, ‘Yeah, you were right — they don’t cause any problems.’”

In Oakland, Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan said that both police and neighbors of medical marijuana facilities now welcome them. “When we talk to police about the regulated dispensaries,” Kaplan said, “they tell us that they’re not just having less crime, they’re attracting zero crime.”

Anyway, there is still time to weigh in on this issue, as the Council isn’t scheduled to hear this issue until early May.

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