Leave Edibles Out of Debate

Open Letter to the Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors: I eat, drink and sleep emerging California marijuana law and I appreciate people reading my comments concerning the 12/7 in-session debate about medical marijuana policy in Santa Barbara County.

I am appalled that any “edible” issue has derailed the greater debate about medical marijuana. Eating weed is not the preferred means of intake. So why would such a topic take up 90 percent of your in-session conversation about outlets? Edibles are less than one percent of most outlets’ sales. If it means condemning edibles from medicinal outlets, do it, please. Then the more important debate may proceed involving raw, dried marijuana for smoking; the preferred form of marijuana. It is absurd that concern for an expiration date on loaded cookies is holding up policy by Santa Barbara County concerning medical marijuana outlets. By design or otherwise, your continued delay in policy is tin-horn obstruction of California law.

Some good news I found was a forthcoming statement from Santa Barbara County about the status for the outlets that have run afoul of laws in the last couple years. We need to know if these outlets are legal, illegal, open, closed, etc. The county seems both bogged down and paralyzed in making decisions.

Also, there remains a snucker in police circles statewide that if money exchanges hands over-the-counter inside a marijuana outlet, that is sufficient evidence to the effect that an illegal profit is being made. As San Jose City Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio was recently quoted as saying, on December 9, concerning a police raid of an outlet in San Jose, any theory that by accepting money the clinics were then illegal was “a farce.” Outlet raids and arrests based on the same cock-eyed interpretation of California law is widespread.