| Graphic: NORML |
When supervisors in Placer County, California voted last week to ban medical marijuana dispensaries, they relied heavily on the information contained in a “White Paper on Marijuana Dispensaries” from the California Police Chiefs Association. Trouble is, the cop-sponsored “White Paper” is an inaccurate, nasty bit of propaganda which bears little resemblance to the truth, according to medical marijuana advocates.
Marijuana dispensaries are commonly large money-making enterprises that will sell marijuana to most anyone who produces a physician’s written recommendation for its medical use. These recommendations can be had by paying unscrupulous physicians a fee and claiming to have most any malady, even headaches. While the dispensaries will claim to receive only donations, no marijuana will change hands without an exchange of money. These operations have been tied to organized criminal gangs, foster large grow operations, and are often multi-million-dollar profit centers.
Because they are repositories of valuable marijuana crops and large amounts of cash, several operators of dispensaries have been attacked and murdered by armed robbers both at their storefronts and homes, and such places have been regularly burglarized. Drug dealing, sales to minors, loitering, heavy vehicle and foot traffic in retail areas, increased noise, and robberies of customers just outside dispensaries are also common ancillary byproducts of their operations.
| Photo: ASA |
| Don Duncan, ASA: “Law enforcement has always been an opponent of medical cannabis” |
“What we’re seeing in that report is that police are putting out isolated instances of abuse or misconduct to paint the entire medical cannabis movement,” said Don Duncan, California director for medical marijuana patient advocacy group Americans for Safe Access (ASA).