Today, Gavin Newsom put a lid on places that sell lids and called for a moratorium on marijuana clubs. And we bet we're the only one's in the -ist family who'll ever have to write a story like this about their Mayor. What caused the moratorium is news that came out last week that a new marijuana club, the Holistic Center, had opened right below one of those Care Not Cash welfare hotels set up to help people get off drugs. Oops.
Now, you might be asking how the hell that happened. Turns out that when the owner of the club, Neal Patel, moved in, he told everyone that it was going to be a "medical facility" but never mentioned what kind of facility it was. The place opened, people started getting a whiff of what was going on, and cue outrage.
It turns out that there are thirty-four marijuana medical dispensaries in the city, with three more on the way. According to the Wonder Twins, Matier & Ross, that includes three within blocks of each other on Ocean Avenue, several within a mile of several schools, two right across from each other, and one owned by an ex-crack addicted ex-con. All this for around 7,000 medicinal marijuana users. The growth of these clubs is becoming so widespread that the Fire Department is finding themselves occasionally having to put out fires caused by marijuana growers in the city.
The problem is that ever since Prop 215 passed medical marijuana dispensaries have been completely unregulated so that basically anyone who wants to start one can go ahead and start one. Michaela Alioto-Pier will introduce an emergency ordinance to make the moratorium legal tomorrow and is expected to get unanimous approval. And a few weeks ago, Ross Mirkirami proposed hearings to start with the regulating.