Marijuana: A “Growing” Business In S.F.
With the news about ACLU “legal observers” getting stoned on dope (photos available) while assigned to “monitor potential illegal activities of the Minuteman Project,” there’s green smoke also rising in San Francisco.
The S.F. Chronicle reports: “Nearly a decade after forward-thinking officials in several Bay Area cities approved laws allowing medical marijuana clinics, they must figure out how to regulate them — because few people on either side of the debate deny that the clubs are running amok.”
“Forward-thinking” is what they call making mistakes in San Francisco.
More than 60 of the dispensaries operate in the region — from Livermore to Belmont — as a result of Proposition 215, which California voters approved in 1996 to make marijuana legal for medicinal purposes.
Two examples highlighting the problem have come to light in the past week.
In Union City, a pot club opened without proper business permits earlier this month, and when city officials found out, they shut it down.The City Council then voted to place a moratorium on medical marijuana outlets in the East Bay city until the city has looked for appropriate locations and come up with regulations to govern their operations.
Guess they’ll have to be selling weed without a storefront, just like the old days. Reporters Matier & Ross cut through the smoke on what’s happening in San Francisco:
The Happy Days Herbal Relief Center was one of at least 37 medical marijuana centers to pop up in San Francisco in recent years. It was run by Jeff Hunter, a former crack addict and ex-con — who now, it turns out, is back in jail for allegedly threatening Jennifer Prasetya, his partner at the pot club.
We first told you about the Happy Days club last month, right before the Board of Supervisors decided there ought to be a moratorium on new pot clubs. According to Prasetya, after our column appeared, business really started booming.
Only instead of the usual “hippie” medical marijuana users, Prasetya said, the new clientele was young “thugs” — many adorned with gang tattoos.
To make matters worse, Prasetya says, Hunter was selling the marijuana to people without asking for their city-issued medical marijuana cards, as San Francisco law requires.
When he refused to stop, Prasetya, a Stanford grad and longtime advocate of medical marijuana, who met her partner at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, says she decided to get out and take her $10,000 investment in the business with her.
Prasetya, who figured the club had taken in $50,000 to $60,000 in the month and half that it was open, said she couldn’t even get her down payment back.
So late one night, she went to the club and took 2 pounds worth of “medicine” that she had contributed to the business.
Just goes to show, good business partners are hard to find. Especially when they’re stoned. And you’d figure a “Stanford grad” would know better than to do a deal with a “former crack-addict and ex-con.” But maybe they were both high.
April 18th, 2005 at 11:55 am
Minutemen Attract ACLU: Aspirating Cannabis Losers Unite!
The Word Soundly Heard today comes from a late-late-night post (sincere appologies to Mrs. Vet) I made at The Blue State Conservatives that reported the emergence of photos of ACLU ‘legal observers’ (that’s what their t-shirts say) illegally rolling…
April 23rd, 2005 at 2:25 pm
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with smoking marijuana except it’s illegal. No one ever died from hitting up a reefer. Millions die from alcohol abuse. Thankfully, most of them are tight-ass Republican hypocrites. Bottoms up you fuckers!