Police Commissioner: SFPD "politicizing" Medical Marijuana

The whole debate is kind of a fraud. Last year, the police department's vice squad busted dozens of grow house operations in the Sunset District. So it's kind of rich to suggest that the police department should take a totally hands off approach as respects a dispensary, or go so far as to support one. The concern of people in the Sunset--including the cops out there--is that the grow houses tend to attract violence (check news reports of Sunset grow house busts; frequently, there's also guns or weapons). Dispensaries have just as much cash and drugs lying around, and frankly, it is a totally inconsistent use in the Outer Sunset's main commercial corridor. You would have the same opposition over a strip club.

@blooms It's disingenuous to equate illegal grow houses (like the ones busted last year in the Sunset) with legal marijuana dispensaries (like the one at the center of this debate). They're not the same, and using the former as an argument against the latter is just scare-mongering.

Wil: where do you think dispensaries get their stock from? Last I heard, Big Pharma wasn't stocking 420 for retail sale. I have nothing against pot; however, I have no interest in a dispensary 10 blocks from my house. And as far as equating the grow houses with dispensaries, at least four of the houses busted in the Sunset last year were selling to dispensaries. http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2009/09/grow_house_crackdown.php

If you want to legalize it, I'm all for it. When this is repealed call me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Substances_Act

United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Coop., 532 U.S. 483 (2001).

You are always free to not go to the dispensary 10 blocks from your house. I can't imagine any other way it might affect you.

Put the dispensaries ONLY in SF Government Health Clinics and have the "customers" enroll in Healthy San Francisco. Alternatively, have the dispensaries at Police Stations; they are open 24 hours.

If there's one thing I've noticed about law enforcement, it isn't too different from the whores they bust for prostitution: shit ain't gonna get done until a bitch gets paid. I don't think it's mere coincidence that police management around the Bay Area, people who previously had nothing to say, are all of a sudden vocal in opposition. This smells like a coordinated campaign and I'd love to know who is bankrolling it.

Good ideas, DT. I know for a fact that dispensaries and co-ops have proposed this on numerous occasions, not just in San Francisco but in nearby cities as well. Elected leaders and local "concerned citizens" won't oppose this, worse, they actively ignore it because it's the ultimate bluff calling device. They don't want regulated access, they don't want to follow the law, they just want access to be someone else's problem, not theirs.