[b]In our opinion: County should survey medical MJ users [/b]
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Source: http://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/Stories/0,1413,91~3080~2803967,00.html

We appreciate county supervisor Jim Wattenburger's attempt - to get the county to look at getting some budgetary mileage out of the burgeoning medical marijuana dispensing business in this county.

We also understand why he is talking more now about health and safety rather than money. Pot growers making a mint off medical marijuana patients and feeding them pot full of heavy metals and pesticides is a problem many medical marijuana patients say they face all the time.

Wattenburger clearly learned some lessons in the two weeks it took for him to suggest taxing medical marijuana and the board meeting this week when he tried to get a serious discussion of the problems in general going to no avail.

Supervisor Mike Delbar gave it a try when he said he thought they should look carefully at what's happening with dispensaries in Ukiah - that they may or may not be operating completely legitimately.

We agree that the dispensaries should be under someone's oversight, but who? Right now it's been largely left up to law enforcement and that's a good place to start but we believe that rampant abuses of Prop. 215 which legalized medical marijuana are beginning to turn the public against a good and compassionate law.

We agree that the supervisors perhaps have more to worry about with the budget crisis in the county and that this may not have been the time to take on what would clearly be a complex and lengthy process of regulating medical marijuana dispensing.

The county is involved in the pilot project for a statewide medical marijuana ID card system and that may provide an opportunity to get input from users as to where they get their pot, whether they worry about its quality and safety and whether they believe they are getting ripped off by local dispensaries.

We think the county Health Department ought to take this opportunity - while they are contacting medical marijuana ID card users - to survey them on possible problems in the dispensing arena that the county could take up later on in cooperation with law enforcement and other local governments.