Wes told me that San Jose was going to discuss regulating marijuana, and it was bound to be interesting. I got there about half an hour before the City Council started the meeting, and there was a surprising number of people showing their support for the marijuana dispensaries and cannabis collectives.

     

     

There were also a lot of people in suits with ASA name tags. One of them told me ASA stands for Americans for Safe Access. Those guys were going over their talking points so they could make the one minute the Mayor would let each of them address the body count.

     

The media was there getting pithy sound bites from the media spokespersons. After a while the guys with guitars started singing "every where I go I'm a criminal because I smoke marijuana."

     

     

I was just going in when the Giants mascot was leaving. I would have liked to clap for them along with everybody else, but I hadn't know they were going to be honored for winning the California League Championship.





They were honoring the Vietnam Vets when I sat down. The line I remember most was "never again will we confuse the soldiers with the war."







According to the agenda, item 4.2 was "Direction on Municipal Regulations and Enforcement Pertaining to Medicinal Use of Cannabis", but according to the guy sitting to my right they were hearing that last to make us all wait, and maybe learn a thing or two about government.



  

There were something like 50 people there to support the swimming program. The city is in dire financial difficulty, and they have threatened to cut the program back. These people were all here to show support for using the pools. As each groups item was finished they would stand up and file out reasonably quietly.

There was a batch of seniors there to object to closing the Alma Senior Center. Several of them pointed out that "Alma" is a word for "soul", and it really is the soul of their community.



During the discussion about solid waste disposal one City Council member said "I don't want to go through brain surgery on this the way we did last time this contract got renegotiated." Of all the items, this was the one that had the most suits interested in it.



Finally the marijuana regulation item came up. It was about 4 PM. I'd been sitting there with no food since breakfast for close to three hours. The medical marijuana patients around me were muttering about needing their medicine.

     

The presentation started with Pierluigi Oliverio presenting the issue and the direction he thought staff should go. San Jose has 23 dispensaries/collectives that are known to City Government, but there could be more. The three areas where ordinances could be developed are zoning, taxing and permitting. He felt that the "nightmare scenario" is the one that Los Angeles has, where they have so many dispensaries that it is almost comical, and the standards are nonexistent. Much better are Santa Cruz and Oakland, where the regulation seems to work for many. At this point in time Oakland gets about $500,000/year in tax dollars per dispensary. That kind of money could help San Jose with the budget problems a lot. He also recommended a moratorium on the allowing of more dispensaries.

There was Q&A between City Council members and staff for a while after his presentation. One of them talked about her relative who had chemotherapy for her cancer and was advised by her doctor to "get marijuana" even though he couldn't give her a prescription. When she'd asked how to get it he had told her "ask your kids." She finished the anecdote by saying "we need to do better than that."

           

After that they opened it up for public comment. Many patients talked about needing marijuana for their health problems. A few were opposed to marijuana because "it's bad." One dispensary called The Purple Elephant got a lot of criticism for generating lots of traffic that was obviously partying kids in a quiet residential neighborhood. Somebody pointed out that Santa Clara County is bigger than 12 States, and what we do will get a lot of attention outside California.

  

Mayor Chuck Reed kept the line moving. Around 6 PM I had to go, because I had a previous commitment in Palo Alto.

     

On the way out I looked at this tubular sculpture in the hall. I felt like it was the very soul of the "sausage making" process I'd witnessed a step of in the chambers. I felt about the way that woman looked to.



The next day I found this article about the event in the paper.