nancyo
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Bob Filner Endorses Medicinal Marijuana Tax Initiative
In response to ImStoned, I don't think you understand the history of this issue. MM patients were not "fine" before. Prop 215 and SB 420 were indeed put in place to help insure safe access to medical cannabis, but they did not address local issues. Last year, the SD city council passed their ill-conceived ordinance that would have forced all dispensaries to close. How accessible will medical cannabis be for seriously ill patients if they cannot obtain it safely and legally within their own city? Also, I am mystified by your reference to when dispensaries "decided to sell pot for profit." Where do you think people were getting marijuana before there were legitimate dispensaries offering high quality medical cannabis? The drug cartels have been and continue to be the elements that are selling 'pot for profit'. Dispensaries in California must be run by a collective as a non-profit---they can compensate members who grow and who operate the dispensary, but the collective can't accumulate profits. I can't imagine you have an issue with paying laborers for their labor. Lastly, your reference to 'importing it from another county' makes even less sense than your earlier points. Agricultural centers are generally not located in big cities. Much of California's #1 cash crop is grown outdoors in other counties such as Humboldt. Did you put this in your letter so that some would read 'country' instead of 'county'? Because since Prop 215 was enacted, a cottage industry has sprung up around medical cannabis that has provided Americans with medical cannabis grown by Americans and distributed by Americans. Sadly, hundreds of these jobs have been destroyed by joint action of the federal government and the SD city attorney to shut down the very dispensaries that were compliant with all possible local and state law. It's a no-brainer that the compassionate use initiative being circulated will give some protection to dispensary operators. As MM patients, we want our collective storefronts to stay safe and open. There's nothing in the initiative that gives any collective running a dispensary preferential treatment over another. It will simply make them all safer. I am a MM patient and activist, and I support this initiative. The Cal. Cannabis Coalition does not represent my views. Anyone who reads the facts can learn the truth. PS. The confusion over the number of collectives involved in the creation of the ordinance is likely due to the fact that at the beginning, sixty collectives were involved, but at this point most of the dispensaries have been shut down. The collectives for the most part are still very much here.— February 29, 2012 11:55 a.m.