San Diego marijuana experience under London's scrutiny

Does San Diego scromit?

London’s tabloid The Daily Mail, which spends considerable time and ink on Britain’s royals, has a new target: San Diego pot users. “How California’s legal cannabis dream became a public health nightmare” screamed a July 2 headline. “It’s a class B drug in the UK — but in the US state, it’s led to spiralling addiction, psychotic illnesses and hospitals facing a deluge of poisonings.” As the debate over making pot legal in the United Kingdom rages, Mail on Sunday deputy health editor Eve Simmons was dispatched to the Golden State to ferret out the underside of the burgeoning marijuana industry here and came up with a bushel of scary findings.

“I’m in upmarket Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, California, in one of the area’s many so-called ‘wellness’ shops, just a stone’s throw from designer boutiques such as Gucci and Saint Laurent,” Simmons writes. “Part of my journey followed in the footsteps of London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who recently visited a number of LA’s dispensaries on a ‘fact finding mission.’ He announced that a new group would be set up to look at the benefits of legalising cannabis in the UK.” Her trip south to San Diego turned grim. “We’ve been seeing the problems for a while now: depressive breakdowns, psychosis, suicidal thoughts, all related to cannabis,” Dr. Roneet Lev, identified as an emergency doctor at Scripps Mercy Hospital, told the reporter.

“I want people to know the truth about this drug. We’ve been sold a lie, that cannabis use is harmless and even has a multitude of health benefits. It is exactly the same as what happened with tobacco. The industry told the public it was good for their health at first, before it was proven to be deadly.” The story highlights “a newly recognised condition called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, or ‘scromiting.’” Says San Diego’s Lev: “It means screaming and violent vomiting. I call it the audible cannabis condition, because I hear the violent screams down the hall before I see the patient.” Said the story, “Before 2016, Dr. Lev rarely saw patients with this problem. Now she sees at least one per shift. Symptoms can continue for days, or weeks, and there is no effective treatment.”

But Lev’s remarks quickly drew pushback online, including a July 5 post by Vice noting that Lev had served as “chief medical officer for the White House’s office of national drug control policy during Donald Trump’s presidency.” Peter Grinspoon, identified as “a primary care doctor teaching at Harvard Medical School” told Vice World News that “scromiting” wasn’t a big problem in the U.S. “Certainly not. It’s a made-up word.” Added Steve Rolles, who Vice called a senior policy analyst for the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, “There’s a nugget of truth in it, albeit horribly overblown; cannabis hyperemesis syndrome — severe vomiting amongst long-term daily users — is a real if very rare condition.”

Amplified cash flow

Ex-San Diego city council Democrat Georgette Gomez lost June’s special election to fill the seat of departed Assembly Democrat Lorena Gonzalez to ex-city councilman and mayoral hopeful David Alvarez, also a Democrat. So while he came in second to Gomez in the June regular election primary, he still has the incumbent’s advantage in November’s runoff.

But the real winner, at least when it comes to special election money, was Gomez’s top consultant, Amplify Campaigns. According to figures posted online by the Ballot Book website, Amplify got $368,794 from the Gomez campaign fund for a variety of services and spending. In addition, Steve Padilla’s state senate campaign kitty spent $62,908 with the consultant in 2021 and 2022, per Ballot Book numbers. He finished first in the June primary and is headed for a fall runoff against Republican Alejandro Galicia. Other Amplify clients during this year and last include San Diego city council Democrat Jen Campbell’s reelection committee ($110,606) and the reelection bid of Democratic County supervisor Nathan Fletcher ($37,130).

Amplify’s Dan Rottenstreich, says the firm’s website, “has over a decade of experience leading campaigns and creating impactful direct mail and digital advertising for candidates, labor unions and progressive groups.” This past February, it fell to Rottenstreich to issue a statement for San Diego District Attorney and former-Republican-turned-independent Summer Stephan, another of his clients, withdrawing her support for hardline Republican Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer after a racial bias allegation against him came to light. (He was easily reelected in June.) Another Rottenstreich client, a group largely composed of contractors and labor groups trying to raise taxes to fund local infrastructure projects, failed to garner sufficient signatures to make the ballot, according to the county Registrar of voters. Howeer, “there’s a big discrepancy between what we turned in and what they counted,” Rottenstreich, spokesman for the campaign, told the Union-Tribune. “The question is, what’s going on here? Is there a clerical issue with the registrar, or did our petition-gathering firm have some issue on their end?”

— Matt Potter (@sdmattpotter)

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