This an interesting article about a cannabis club in a popular region of San Francisco.
Marijuana Fight Envelops Fisherman's Wharf
By JESSE McKINLEY
Published: July 3, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO, July 2 The newest attraction planned for Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco's most popular tourist destination, has no sign, no advertisements and not even a scrap of sourdough. Yet everyone seems to think that the new business, the Green Cross, will be a hit, drawing customers from all over the region to sample its aromatic wares.
Customers and employees at the Green Cross, a medical marijuana club, before the business was forced out of the Mission District in San Francisco by neighbors who complained of rising traffic and crime.
For some, that is exactly the problem.
The Green Cross is a cannabis club, one of scores that sell marijuana to patients with a doctor's note. They have sprouted around California in the decade since the passage of Proposition 215, which legalized the use and sale of marijuana to those suffering from chronic pain, illness or infirmity. San Francisco, a hot spot in the AIDS epidemic, voted overwhelmingly in favor of the proposition in 1996 and has about 30 clubs, serving some 25,000 patients and caregivers.
But none of San Francisco's medical marijuana dispensaries, as they are formally known, have been located in places anywhere as popular as Fisherman's Wharf, where most people come to enjoy chowder, Ghirardelli chocolate or cable cars. Now, with the opening of the new club just weeks away, some residents and merchants are fighting to keep it out.
"The city is saturated with pot clubs," said T. Wade Randlett, the president of SF SOS, a quality-of-life group that opposes the planned club. "Fisherman's Wharf is a tourism attraction, and this is not the kind of tourism we're trying to attract."
Emboldened by a series of regulations passed last fall by the city's Board of Supervisors, some neighborhoods are resisting new marijuana dispensaries, which they say attract crime and dealers bent on reselling the drugs. In the debate over the new rules last year, several neighborhoods successfully lobbied to be exempted from having new clubs.
Other neighborhoods managed to get clubs shuttered, including a previous version of the Green Cross, which was forced out of a storefront in the city's Mission District after neighbors said they had seen a rise in drug dealing, traffic problems and petty crime, a charge the Green Cross denies.
The proposed dispensary comes at a time when medical marijuana's legal standing is murky. Last summer, the United States Supreme Court upheld federal authority to prosecute the possession and use of marijuana for medical purposes, despite voter-approved laws allowing medical marijuana in California and nearly a dozen other states.
That decision prompted California to stop issuing identification cards to patients, for fear of opening state workers up to federal charges of abetting a crime. (Patients can still be issued cards by San Francisco and other California cities.)
Clubs in San Francisco now must go through a permit process, which includes public hearings, and the proposed dispensary at Fisherman's Wharf is the first to have done so. A hundred people packed a neighborhood meeting on June 13, peppering the club's owner, Kevin Reed, with questions. Outside, fliers were handed out imploring residents to "Stop Marijuana Store!" and listing the planned club's proximity to schools and hotels.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/03/us/03green.html?pagewanted=2
If you are already a member of the NY Times you can click and see the rest of the article. It's free to join.
Marijuana Fight Envelops Fisherman's Wharf
By JESSE McKINLEY
Published: July 3, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO, July 2 The newest attraction planned for Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco's most popular tourist destination, has no sign, no advertisements and not even a scrap of sourdough. Yet everyone seems to think that the new business, the Green Cross, will be a hit, drawing customers from all over the region to sample its aromatic wares.
Customers and employees at the Green Cross, a medical marijuana club, before the business was forced out of the Mission District in San Francisco by neighbors who complained of rising traffic and crime.
For some, that is exactly the problem.
The Green Cross is a cannabis club, one of scores that sell marijuana to patients with a doctor's note. They have sprouted around California in the decade since the passage of Proposition 215, which legalized the use and sale of marijuana to those suffering from chronic pain, illness or infirmity. San Francisco, a hot spot in the AIDS epidemic, voted overwhelmingly in favor of the proposition in 1996 and has about 30 clubs, serving some 25,000 patients and caregivers.
But none of San Francisco's medical marijuana dispensaries, as they are formally known, have been located in places anywhere as popular as Fisherman's Wharf, where most people come to enjoy chowder, Ghirardelli chocolate or cable cars. Now, with the opening of the new club just weeks away, some residents and merchants are fighting to keep it out.
"The city is saturated with pot clubs," said T. Wade Randlett, the president of SF SOS, a quality-of-life group that opposes the planned club. "Fisherman's Wharf is a tourism attraction, and this is not the kind of tourism we're trying to attract."
Emboldened by a series of regulations passed last fall by the city's Board of Supervisors, some neighborhoods are resisting new marijuana dispensaries, which they say attract crime and dealers bent on reselling the drugs. In the debate over the new rules last year, several neighborhoods successfully lobbied to be exempted from having new clubs.
Other neighborhoods managed to get clubs shuttered, including a previous version of the Green Cross, which was forced out of a storefront in the city's Mission District after neighbors said they had seen a rise in drug dealing, traffic problems and petty crime, a charge the Green Cross denies.
The proposed dispensary comes at a time when medical marijuana's legal standing is murky. Last summer, the United States Supreme Court upheld federal authority to prosecute the possession and use of marijuana for medical purposes, despite voter-approved laws allowing medical marijuana in California and nearly a dozen other states.
That decision prompted California to stop issuing identification cards to patients, for fear of opening state workers up to federal charges of abetting a crime. (Patients can still be issued cards by San Francisco and other California cities.)
Clubs in San Francisco now must go through a permit process, which includes public hearings, and the proposed dispensary at Fisherman's Wharf is the first to have done so. A hundred people packed a neighborhood meeting on June 13, peppering the club's owner, Kevin Reed, with questions. Outside, fliers were handed out imploring residents to "Stop Marijuana Store!" and listing the planned club's proximity to schools and hotels.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/03/us/03green.html?pagewanted=2
If you are already a member of the NY Times you can click and see the rest of the article. It's free to join.
