City of Hope

Palm Springs bucks the trend with its compassionate attitude

By David Burton

Palm Springs has long marched to the beat of a spectacularly different drummer.

In 1963, the city launched the world’s largest aerial tramway. In 1988, it elected singer/songwriter Sonny Bono to serve as its mayor. In 2003, it became home to the nation’s only pedestrian bridge for nudists—the so-called “Bridge of Thighs.”

So it was no small feat when, in 2009, the Palm Springs City Council managed to surprise a citizenry that had seen just about everything by passing the Inland Empire’s first—and, still, only—ordinance allowing medical cannabis collectives to operate in its borders. While scores of other California cities and at least a dozen counties have banned dispensaries, this desert oasis in Riverside County chose instead to adopt rules regulating up to three city-approved collectives.

Today, two full-service collectives—Canna Help and Desert Organic Solutions—dispense medicinal cannabis to thousands of Palm Springs residents six days a week, free of local police harassment and with the official blessing of local government. A third dispensary was approved by the city but has yet to open.

What is so different about Palm Springs that its leaders were able to see past the objections of powerful anti-drug forces and buck the statewide trend toward denying patients access to cannabis?  How were medical marijuana activists able to pull off such a feat?

According to both activists and Palm Springs officials, the answer lies in the city’s large gay community.

That demographic, intimately familiar with the benefits of cannabis in treating HIV- and AIDS-related illnesses such as Wasting Syndrome, has long provided their elected leaders the necessary political cover to pass marijuana-friendly laws. Indeed, California’s Medical Marijuana Program itself has its origins in San Francisco, where activists such as Dennis Peron fought for and won key freedoms to use the drug medicinally.

“The city recognized back in 2005 that we had a large population of older residents and individuals suffering from AIDS,” says Palm Springs City Attorney Doug Holland. “I think [the Palm Springs ordinance] was the result of a natural sensitivity to their needs and a desire by the council to address them.”

Lanny Swerdlow, medical director of the THCF Medical Clinic in Riverside (and CULTURE health columnist), agrees with Holland that the city’s gay population—the fifth largest in the nation—provided the cornerstone on which the ordinance was built.

“Three of the five people on the Palm Springs council are gay or lesbian, and generally where you have gay people, you have marijuana,” Swerdlow says. “You have West Hollywood. San Francisco, the same way. Gay people are very much aware of the benefits that cannabis provides for AIDS patients. Everyone knows AIDS patients, and wants to make sure they have access to cannabis.”

But it took the lobbying efforts of Swerdlow and a handful of other advocates to convince the city’s leaders that a well-written set of rules for collectives would prevent the kind of free-for-all witnessed in nearby Los Angeles. In that city, the absence of a reasonable ordinance resulted in more than 600 storefront dispensaries rushing in to fill the void.

Together with collective operators Stacy Hochanadel and Jim Camper, and with the critical support of city insiders like Palm Springs downtown merchant association president Joy Meredith, Swerdlow in 2005 persuaded the council to put together a task force charged with drafting a medical cannabis ordinance. On the task force were top city officials, including the mayor and the chief of police, and representatives of the cannabis community, including Swerdlow, Camper and Hochanadel.

“We went through almost two years of writing the ordinance itself before the planning commission began getting it ready for the council to vote it in,” says Hochanadel, owner of Canna Help and the grandson of a former Palm Springs mayor. “ . . . The council and city staff really stuck their necks on the line to provide an ordinance that gave access to patients that really need it.”

“The ordinance has been a certain success, I think,” City Attorney Holland says.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

AIDS Wasting Syndrome is a condition in which the body loses muscle mass at a rapid rate due to several factors, including the body’s inability to absorb essential nutrients, diarrhea and loss of appetite due to chemotherapy. While there is no cure for this condition, many patients report success when using cannabis to increase appetite and reduce nausea.