Medical Marijuana Initiative Heads to Palo Alto Voters

Palo Alto may become the first city on the Peninsula to allow medical marijuana dispensaries.

The Palo Alto City Council voted unanimously early this morning to send an initiative to voters next fall that would require three cannabis dispensaries to open within carefully selected zones in the city.

The decision is the result of a petition submitted to and certified by City Clerk Donna Grider on July 25, with 6,341 signatures.

If passed by voters, the measure would require the city to amend the charter and create a four percent sales tax on all medical cannabis sales, allow three not-for-profit dispensaries to open and offer safe access to patients who qualify under the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, and design operational, procedural and zoning requirements for those dispensaries.

About a dozen speakers from Palo Alto and nearby cities spoke in favor of the initiative with one East Palo Alto resident speaking against it.

Palo Alto resident Tracy Chen began sobbing while describing to Council her dependence on medical cannabis for treating a severe neurological disorder that has afflicted her for 20 years.

“When you’re in chronic pain and you can’t function and you can’t work and you can’t socialize, and you find something that brings back your whole life,” she said, then paused, choking back tears. “I can’t believe you guys would ban it.”

That ban, passed in 1997 by a Council vote, prohibited dispensaries under a zoning ordinance before numerous other state laws were passed adding further safeguards and clarity for local jurisdictions wishing to comply with Proposition 215.

John Lustig, a “fourth-generation Santa Clara County resident,” told the council this morning that the local dispensary ban was based on misperceptions about the dangers and benefits of the drug.

“When will the falsehoods and fallacies about cannabis cease?” he asked the council. “In 10,000 years of documented cannabis consumption, there has not been one single case of death as a result of using it.”

The one dissenter in the group, Mike Francois, said he’s against drugs in general, and considers marijuana to be a gateway drug. “I’ve seen people start off with marijuana and go to something harder,” he said, “because it’s not strong enough."

He told the council that if the city does eventually allow pot clubs, to conduct a study and “see how many of your residents smoke.”

The man backing the initiative, Thomas Moore, is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and said the measure “just makes sense.”

“I’ve seen research that suggests that marijuana makes you mellow,” he said after being reached by phone at home. “Alcohol and tobacco is far more dangerous than marijuana. If I had to sit next to a drunk guy or a mellow guy, I’d pick the mellow guy.”

Moore noted that a close friend of his, fellow Hoover fellow and former San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara, supports legalizing marijuana entirely.

McNamara penned an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle last fall, arguing that those who seek to continue criminalizing marijuana are simply playing upon people’s fears.

“Prohibition advocates will promote fear,” he wrote, “and they will ignore the vast bulk of law enforcement and medical experience on marijuana.”

McNamara has some backing.

A RAND study released just a few weeks ago suggests that medical pot dispensaries may actually lead to a decrease in crime.

And one study by the Denver Police Department found dispensaries were robbed less frequently in one year than banks or liquor stores.

Jonathan Steigman, a representative of the Silicon Valley chapter of Americans for Safe Access, said the attitude of law enforcement toward medical marijuana began shifting in 1988, when Francis L. Young, the top Administrative Law Judge for the Drug Enforcement Agency, ruled that cannabis should be reclassified from a Schedule I drug because it is “one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.”

Steigman appeared at City Hall Monday night to ask council members to simply adopt the initiative as is versus sending it to the voters, because he said patients on the Peninsula can’t wait, and often won’t speak out for themselves for fear of retribution.

“There are tens of thousand of patients on the Peninsula, but most of them will not show up at these City Council hearings,” he said.

“A lot of them are people with jobs, they’re depending on the health insurance from their job, and even though it’s legal to be a patient, you can still get fired from your job, you can get evicted from your house, you can lose custody of your children.”

Councilmember Larry Klein then motioned to send the initative directly to Palo Alto voters in 2012 rather than try to draft competing legislation, as was an option.

"I think our obligation is to put it on the ballot and let the people decide," said Klein.

Councilmember Greg Scharff seconded, adding, "I don’t think a competing measure is necessary or warranted. People will either vote it up or down."

The motion passed with all members voting for it and Councilmembers Yeh and Price absent.