| Council majority caves to
Richmond’s ‘zero tolerance’ for voter-approved
Prop. 215
By Charles Douglas
HUMBOLDT SENTINEL
|  The
long-awaited consideration of adopting the county’s
medical marijuana possession and cultivation limits
in Arcata was derailed at Wednesday’s Council
meeting following a sometimes hostile debate between
Humboldt State University’s chief administrator
and patients in need of medicine.
“Humboldt State is suffering from
the perception of being drug-friendly…don’t
be mislead by false arguments about the so-called medical
uses of medical marijuana,” HSU President Rollin
Richmond said. “These drugs are killing people.” |
According to Richmond, who alleged similarity between marijuana
and heroin, this medicine approved for use by California voters
in 1996 is a source of crime and torture in Arcata.
“We will not tolerate the use of medical marijuana
on campus,” he said to light applause and much jeering
from the audience. “You will be damaging people if you
adopt this proposal.”
Richmond also said the pledge of assistance from the University
Police Department made by him just two nights previous in
the same Council Chambers would be put in jeopardy, along
with the entire Healthy Plaza Initiative, which put him with
odds with a host of hostile replies, including HSU alumnus
John “Geronimo” Garcia. He pointed to the new
gateway and the proposed parking garage as poor decision-making
on Richmond’s part, as well as characterizing as “hypocrisy”
the continued sale of alcohol on campus.
“His attitudes are very horrible,” Garcia said.
“If Rollin Richmond wants to say that we need to work
with the [UPD] to persecute people more, I think that’s
wrong…Rollin Richmond is way out of reality here in
Arcata.”
Homeless activist Kim Starr urged Councilmembers to stick
with doctor’s recommendations instead of politicians
in strengthening Arcata’s protections for patients,
disputing the Council’s reliance on Arcata Police Chief
Randy Mendosa for assistance in drafting law. Economic Development
Committeemember Shaye Harty also supported the reform as part
of the implementation of Senate Bill 420, adopted by the California
Legislature in 2004.
“For [Richmond] to say this is not a medicine is lunacy,”
she said.
Veterans for Peace organizer Brian Willson disputed the tying
of medicine to hard drugs, citing government statistics which
peg the number of marijuana deaths annually at zero.
“It’s not backed up by the empirical evidence
of the Centers for Disease Control,” he said to applause.
“It’s a victimless crime, if we want to call it
a crime. The prohibition itself is the problem.”
While Arcata Chamber of Commerce Boardmember Scott Hunt asked
Council to listen to Richmond as he’s “the commander
of one of the chief economic drivers of this County,”
former Council candidate Jhym “Fhyre” Phoenix
said Richmond was advocating a break with state law.
“I don’t think these comments should be taken
seriously and I don’t think you should work with his
police force if that’s a condition,” he said.
While Councilmember Harmony Groves protested Richmond’s
characterization of medical marijuana, she sided with Mendosa
in denouncing the establishment of any concordance with the
County guidelines of three pounds of permissible possession
and 100 square feet of permissible cultivation.
“I like the way that we have the ordinance now,”
she said.
Mendosa had earlier outlined a discretionary policy he pursued
of first consulting a representative of the District Attorney’s
office before seizing a medical marijuana garden, although
he left it up to Council if they wanted to “formalize
the procedure.”
Arcata’s ordinance, which was adopted six years before
the advent of SB 420, leaves blank the establishment of such
guidelines, leaving Arcata’s limit at the default state
minimum levels of eight ounces of permissible possession and
six mature plants’ worth of permissible cultivation.
Arguments by Councilmember Dave Meserve, who wanted the City
Attorney to come up with specific language to amend the ordinance,
fell on the deaf ears of all but Councilmember Paul Pitino,
who defended the medical use of marijuana.
“I wonder how you bring something simple and how it
gets twisted up all over the place,” he said.
Charles Douglas is the Editor-in-Chief of the Humboldt
Sentinel, and can be reached at www.charlesdouglas.net.
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