« 4,047 Hawaii patients have medical marijuana cards | Main | Celebrating his constitutional right to practice religion in the USA »
DEA attempting to shut down the most progressive city in the nation, San Francisco
By Hempology | February 2, 2008
Bay Area Reporter, CA
31 Jan 2008
Matthew S. Bajko
POT CLUB ADVOCATES ASSAIL SILENCE ON DEA TACTICS
Medical cannabis advocates are stepping up pressure on San Francisco officials to denounce the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s latest tactic of targeting landlords who rent to pot clubs in their long-running dispute with California over the use of marijuana to treat health ailments.
“We are calling for people to stand up for safe access,” said Shona Gochenaur, executive director of the local patient advocacy group Axis of Love and chair of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club’s Cannabis Caucus. “This is a safe access emergency.”
Frustrated by the lack of response, medicinal marijuana supporters convinced local Democratic Party leaders to pass a resolution last week calling on Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Board of Supervisors to speak out against the DEA’s decision to threaten property owners with asset forfeiture and imprisonment for leasing space to medical cannabis dispensaries.
At its meeting Wednesday, January 23 the Democratic County Central Committee overwhelmingly adopted the resolution which called the DEA’s tactics “aggressive, hard and unfair” and called on Congress to investigate the DEA’s conduct. At its meeting the night before the Milk Club, which has 60 members who use medical marijuana, voted to endorse the resolution.
“I do not want to go out to 16th and Mission to get my medical marijuana. I urge you to do whatever you can to get the feds off our backs,” said Karen Kircher, a Milk Club member and co-chair of the Women’s Health Collective at Axis of Love.
DCCC member Holli Their, who added her name as a co-sponsor of the resolution, said “to have Bush and the DEA and the feds come in to San Francisco we all know why they are doing it. They want to shut down the most progressive city in the nation and it is just disgusting.”
The resolution singled out Newsom and the Board of Supervisors, in particular, in asking them to follow the lead of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, who already has spoken out publicly against the DEA and its harassment of landlords. The resolution also requests that the city’s state and federal representatives also take a public stance against the DEA. Activists held a rally at City Hall Tuesday urging the mayor and board members to take a stand against the DEA’s “scare tactics.”
State Senator Carole Migden ( D-San Francisco ) introduced a resolution in Sacramento January 10 that asks Congress to enact legislation requiring the DEA and other federal agencies to respect the compassionate use laws of California and 11 other states.
Medical cannabis activists argued last week that it is time for other San Francisco electeds to follow suit.
“We cannot make the DEA in San Francisco feel welcome and shut down our collectives. That is unacceptable,” said Gochenaur. “We are going backwards in time by 30 years. And I don’t want to go back 30 years.”
A spokesman for Newsom did not respond to a request for comment this week.
Last December, Gochenaur said a group of 20 activists called on Newsom to recommit his support for San Francisco being a sanctuary city for medical cannabis and to include landlords under the sanctuary policy. Their pleas have gone unanswered, she said.
“He needs to protect the citizens of his city who have voted overwhelmingly over the last 30 years in support of medical cannabis. He needs to stand up for it just like he stood up for gay marriage and for illegal immigration,” said Gochenaur. “My people are going to be pushed out onto the black market by their own government. That is unacceptable.”
As for the supervisors, Gochenaur said activists have been waiting for Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi to introduce a resolution similar to the one Migden put forth in the state Senate and the DCCC passed last week. She said it was unclear why the resolution had yet to be brought forward.
Mirkarimi told the Bay Area Reporter this week that while the DEA’s targeting of landlords “is reprehensible,” the DCCC’s action was “a serious misfire,” since the board’s passing a resolution would have little impact on changing DEA policies.
“We pass resolutions by the boat load. It is not as effective to pass another meaningless law unless the mayor is brought into line to compel our federal reps to represent our interests,” he said. “Otherwise, it is just another resolution that nobody will take seriously.”
He suggested activists approach other supervisors and ask them to submit the resolution, which he said he would nonetheless support even though it would only be “symbolic.”
“If it comes before the board I am sure it will pass,” he said. “It is a bet I will make. But we are dealing with a lot of other issues, too.”
Topics: Articles | Comments Off
Comments are closed.