From Kevin Sabet of the MA Prevention Alliance:
This week, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously agreed to shut down all 900 store fronts selling marijuana for so-called “medical” purposes.” Siding with neighborhood residents and public health experts like the American Medical Association, the Council took a courageous stand against what has become a magnet for crime, nuisance, and addiction. The vote — and the federal court ruling confirming the decision that followed just hours after — signals the major sense of buyers’ remorse Californians are feeling after voting in “medical” marijuana 16 years ago.
In 1996, when Californians passed Proposition 215 allowing for marijuana to be used for “medical” purposes, voters decided that if a cancer or AIDS patient should find relief from marijuana, they should not be arrested. Voters also believed that if the patient was too ill and unable to grow marijuana on his or her own, the patient could buy it from a non-profit group of people growing small amounts for specific users.
Fast forward 16 years and most Californians know that “medical” marijuana has become a sad joke. Scantily clad “caregivers” and a few unscrupulous “on-call” doctors line beaches and boulevards promoting marijuana use for everything from back pain to headaches. The chronically ill are hardly accessing marijuana — a recent study found that the average Prop 215 card holder was a 32-year-old white male with no life threatening illness (instead they got pot for indications such as “relaxation”) and a history of alcohol and drug use. The typical scene of a “dispensary” involves 300-pound bouncers guarding tinted doors, inside of which are 21-year-old kids giving medical advice and medicine called “Purple Haze” to anyone with a pulse. Homicides, increased youth drug use, property and neighborhood crime and advertising to kids have all become a part of doing business. Today’s dispensaries — really pot shops selling the drug under the guise of medicine — bear little resemblance to voters’ intent.
Read the full article HERE.