Ganja reprieve in La La land
by digby
I guess it’s kind of hard to look someone in the face and tell them it’s just tough luck, they can’t have their medicine:
In a faint and gravelly voice, Los Angeles Councilman Bill Rosendahl delivered an impassioned plea Tuesday asking his colleagues to lift the ban on pot dispensaries, asking them: “Where does anybody go, even a councilman go, to get his medical marijuana?”
Minutes before the council voted 11-2 to rescind its recently passed ban on storefront pot shops, Rosendahl said the council’s decision had created “a very emotional moment” for him. Rosendahl has been battling cancer for the past three months and relying on medical marijuana during that time.
“On the 20th of July, I had an MRI that was very, very serious. And the bottom line on that was, they didn’t give me much time to live. And I said, ‘No, no no no, I’m not ready to go. I certainly want to live a long time,’” said Rosendahl, who has been undergoing chemotherapy treatments and relying on a walker to move around in recent days.
Rosendahl, 67, said he began taking medical marijuana a decade ago to manage his neuropathy, a stinging pain in his feet, taking it “occasionally at night.” But on Tuesday, he put the issue in the context of his battle with cancer, which has made it difficult for him to speak above a whisper.
“If I can’t get marijuana, and it’s medically prescribed, what do I do?” he asked his colleagues.
Rosendahl criticized President Obama’s handling of the issue and spoke against some of the recent federal raids of dispensaries. And he said Los Angeles should work with state lawmakers to make California law regulating medical marijuana clearer.
But as moving as that was, it wasn’t the reason they rescinded the ban:
The Los Angeles City Council’s decision to repeal its ban on medical marijuana dispensaries underscores the political savvy of the increasingly organized and well-funded network of marijuana activists.
The activists sought to place a referendum overturning the ban on the March ballot, when the mayor and eight council seats will be up for grabs.
Tuesday’s repeal of the ban marked a major victory for the coalition. The effort was led by an advocacy group called Americans for Safe Access, a group of dispensaries called the Greater Los Angeles Collective Alliance and the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770 which has organized workers at more than 50 dispensaries.
By collecting tens of thousands of signatures to qualify the referendum, the activists forced council members to decide whether to rescind the ordinance or put the matter on the March ballot.
That’s some savvy organizing. And see? It can be good for business to unionize. There’s a lesson in that.
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