Almost 19 years after the dispensing of medical marijuana was made legal in California San Diego gave final approval on Thursday to the city’s first legal marijuana dispensary, which will be run by an HIV-positive San Diego State lecturer who smokes pot daily to relieve his symptoms.
It will be the first legal dispensary to operate in the city since California voters approved the use of medical marijuana in 1996. Located near the Otay Mesa international border, it’s expected to open in early March.
San Diego joins nearly 50 other cities across the state that allow legal medical marijuana dispensaries, but it will be the only city in this county to allow them. The county government, however, allowed a dispensary to open last summer on the outskirts of El Cajon.
The Planning Commission unanimously approved the Otay dispensary on Thursday after nearly three hours of testimony. Three other legal dispensaries in San Diego are scheduled to receive their final approvals on March 12, one in Clairemont, one in San Ysidro and one in the Midway district near the Valley View Casino arena.
“We feel as though we hit the lottery being selected first,” said David Blair, owner of the Otay dispensary and a business ethics teacher.
Blair said his goal is helping sick people in the South Bay and other parts of San Diego use marijuana to control their pain like he has — and to improve the quality of their lives.
“I suffer from such pain and inflammation in my joints and muscles that the tears would flow out of me even after taking 600 milligrams of ibuprofen,” said Blair, noting that he suffers from several other illnesses in addition to being HIV-positive. “With medical marijuana, I don’t have any pain. I don’t believe in miracles, but this is pretty close.”
San Diego’s legalization of marijuana sales follows a nationwide trend, with 23 states allowing the sale of medical marijuana and four others — Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska — allowing the sale of recreational pot.
Supporters of medical marijuana and the dispensary, A Green Alternative, said Thursday’s approval was a major milestone.
Some also predicted the emergence of legal dispensaries, which must be nonprofits and allow their products to be tested, would accelerate the closure of an estimated 100 illegal pot shops that continue to operate across the county while authorities try to shut them down.
“We’re creating a safer environment for the patients,” said Dr. Bob Walder, Blair’s partner and the dispensary’s chief medical officer. “The requirements we have to test for mold and pesticides are finally now on the books to ensure people are getting high-quality medicine.”
Critics of the dispensary said on Thursday that it’s in a high-crime area and near businesses where many children go frequently, including multiple fast food chains. They also said the dispensary will prompt excessive loitering and smoking of marijuana in the parking lot.
“Marijuana will permeate the adjacent businesses,” Barbara Gordon said.
No merchants or landlords near the dispensary spoke during Thursday’s hearing.
Planning Commissioner Anthony Wagner said the city’s level of regulation was so aggressive that he was highly confident there would be no problems at the dispensary.
“You could go have your July 4 picnic in the parking lot and be quite safe,” he said.
Edith Gutierrez, the city official overseeing medical marijuana approvals, said the dispensary satisfies all the requirements in a city ordinance approved last winter. Those include that it be at least 100 feet away from residential property and at least 1,000 feet from schools, playgrounds, libraries, parks, churches and facilities focused on youth activities.
Scott Chipman, leader of the anti-marijuana group San Diegans for Safe Neighborhoods, said the dispensary should be rejected despite it satisfying all of the city’s conditions.
“This is a bureaucratic checking of boxes,” Chipman said.
Supporters said Thursday, however, that the Otay Mesa site, a 1,400-square-foot suite in a two-story building on Roll Drive, was ideally located in an industrial zone nearly five miles from the closest residential area.
In addition, they stressed that the dispensary will have 24-hour armed security even though the business will only be open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.
The landlord of the site. Michael Vogt, said “this is the right tenant at the right time in the right location.”
Blair said the dispensary would be a model business.
“We know right from wrong,” he said. “The reason we floated to the first position is every time the city requested something of us, we doubled it.”
Walder said studies show there’s no connection between dispensaries and a rise in nearby crime. He also downplayed claims that many doctors recklessly prescribe medical marijuana, contending the vast majority of doctors are ethical.
Blair, 59, and Walder, 62, are both newcomers to the medical marijuana industry; neither has ever operated a dispensary or worked at one, and Walder has never used his medical license to prescribe pot.
Blair said the Otay location was chosen partly because he lives nearby in the Eastlake neighborhood of Chula Vista, and partly because there was expected to be little competition to open a city-approved dispensary in the South Bay.
A maximum of 36 dispensaries are allowed under city rules, with a cap of four in each of the nine City Council districts.
But the total is expected to be far lower, with most of the 38 proposed dispensaries concentrated in the Midway area of council district No. 2 and the communities of Kearny Mesa and Mira Mesa in council district No. 6.
Even without such competition in District 8, Blair said he and his partners have spent more than $200,000 on lawyers, consultants, city fees and roughly $27,000 they’ve paid in rent to secure the unopened dispensary location since last February.
Planning commissioners stressed on Thursday that their role was only to determine whether the proposed dispensary meets the city’s land-use criteria and other regulations in the ordinance, not to decide whether marijuana should be legalized or whether the city ordinance should be amended.
“We can’t overturn a statewide referendum from 1996,” said commission chairman Tim Golba.
The conditional use permit approved by the Planning Commission expires in five years.
source UTSanDiego
Marijuana Math 