| If you support medical marijuana patients, don’t buy Ping golf clubs. They don’t want to be associated with you, anyway. |
Golf club manufacturer Ping is threatening to leave its Phoenix headquarters after 45 years if a medical marijuana dispensary is allowed in the neighborhood, according to its attorney. If you support medical marijuana patients, you definitely want to think twice before buying anything made by these morons.
While most dispensary applications sailed through without opposition, Ping objected strenuously to an applicant for a site at 1944 W. North Lane, one block south of the company’s headquarters, reports Michael Clancy at The Arizona Republic.
Ping representative Stephen Earl told a Phoenix hearing officer that the company is “considering” investing $170 million to renovate its headquarters, but “may not do so if the neighborhood decline continues.”
Earl said Ping brings in celebrities and pro golfers from around the world, and college teams rom across the country, for tours and club fittings. Bringing them into a “bad neighborhood” reflects poorly on the company, he said.
| Graphic: Centerfolds Cabaret |
| As if a strip joint wasn’t enough, now hoity-toity Ping has to be neighbors with one of those god-damned marijuana dispensaries. |
The neighborhood already includes a striptease club, Centerfolds Cabaret; a lingerie store, Fascinations; and a hemp products store is planned.
Earl claimed the neighborhood is becoming a “hotbed of deleterious uses,” including the possible medical marijuana dispensary.
Did you get that, patients?
Providing you with safe access to the medicine that works and is recommended by your doctor is apparently a “deleterious use.” You are seemingly being given to understand that acquiring your herbal medicine is akin to going to a strip club, or at least buying naught underwear.
Be sure to remember that Ping is ashamed of having those icky medical marijuana patients and providers hang around in their neighborhood, and they don’t want their celebrity guests to see such unsavory people and activities.
| Graphic: Kathleen Rudell/The Arizona Republic |
The good news is, the use permit was granted to the proposed dispensary despite Ping’s ignorant opposition.
After the hearing, a butt-hurt Earl blustered to the The Republic that moving is “an option that has to be on the table.”
The attorney for the medical marijuana dispensary applicants said they don’t want to get in a tussle with Ping.
“My clients just want an opportunity to run a business,” said Lindsay Schube of the law firm Beus Gilbert, which represents applicants Michelle Gilmore and Joseph Butler.
Deputy City Manager David Krietor said Phoenix will do “all it can” to keep Ping happy. The company is one of the city’s “key employers,” he said. Ping reportedly has a workforce of around 800 employees.
Krietor said he is assembling a team of city staff to “look strategically” at the neighborhood, and will work with Ping “to improve how the community presents itself to the outside world.”
He couldn’t say how such a sanitization approach might impact Centerfolds or the Hemp Mart, which plans a grand opening in April.
But city planning officials admitted there’s not much they can do to prevent such businesses from opening in areas where they meet all the zoning requirements.
Arizona voters in November approved medical marijuana, and dozens of dispensaries will be licensed by the state. To receive dispensary permits, applicants must meet a plethora of city rules, including required distances from schools, churches, parks and homes, as if medical marijuana patients are somehow vaguely disreputable.
After obtaining their city permits, dispensary applicants must go to the Arizona Department of Health Services for licensing, a process that begins May 1.