Ray of Hope

Initiative to quash Santa Ana dispensary ban is headed for the 2014 ballot

If Santa Ana’s ban on dispensaries is the problem . . . a grassroots committee says the nearly 11,000 signatures it gathered could be the cure.

A proposed measure that aims to repeal the city’s existing ban on cannabis storefronts has qualified for the November 2014 election, according to Voice of OC, a news site, and The Orange Juice Blog. The Committee to Support Medical Marijuana Ballot Initiative submitted 10,948 signatures to city officials in January.

Kandice Hawes, the committee’s principal officer and the founder and president for OC NORML—says she’s positive about the future of the initiative—the Santa Ana City Council underestimates the will of the electorate.

“I don’t think the city council is concerned about stopping the initiative,” she says. “They don’t think people are going to actually vote for it.”

The council passed a measure in 2007 that made cannabis dispensaries illegal in the city. Despite that, there are still dozens of dispensaries open throughout the city, although enforcement efforts continue to threaten—and in some cases, close—them.

“That’s the first thing our initiative does—it repeals the ban,” Hawes says. “The City Council measure defines a collective as anyplace where two or more people are transferring medical cannabis,” she continues. “That means that, technically, two patients living in the same house who share cannabis with each other are doing something illegal. It’s a bad law. It’s unconstitutional.”

The measure, entitled the Medical Cannabis Restriction and Limitation Initiative, would allow at least 22 approved dispensaries to operate throughout Santa Ana, providing they are located within authorized boundaries and have been open since before 2011. They would also pay a 2-percent tax.

“There’s a group of collectives that want to follow the law,” Hawes says. “They want to pay taxes.”

However, some places still like being in the grey area. “There are some collectives that don’t want this passed because they want things to stay the same,” she says.

There’s always the chance, however, that the measure could get foiled by a competing one, if the city wanted to gum up the works. “When it comes closer [to Election Day], they might try to run their own initiative against ours, like in the City of Los Angeles,” she says, referring to two competing measures—one originating from City Hall and the other endorsed by an alliance of collectives and co-opts, the Greater Los Angeles Collective Alliance.

Considering the state of the local economy, Hawes says she does not believe that will happen. “I think that the City Council wants this to pass. They need the money,” she says. Because of her work with OC NORML, Hawes has attended many public meetings, and the constant complaint is a lack of funds. “I hear a lot of conversations about how Santa Ana is broke. This initiative can help that.”

“We are only doing what we can on a local level,” Hawes says. “If I could do something on a federal level, I would. I hope things will change. Someone needs to decide that the states deserve to pass their own laws without federal interference, but it’s not going to happen right away.”

santaanammj.com

www.ci.santa-ana.ca.us/coc/medical_cannabis.asp

Safety Measure

While the proposed Medical Cannabis Restriction and Limitation Initiative is Santa Ana-focused, it does address some other very real concerns: the federal government. While city officials wouldn’t be required to violate federal law (U.S. Attorneys once obliquely threatened Oakland city officials with arrest for moving forward with approving large-scale MMJ grows), it does forbid them “from cooperating with Federal Officials with an intention of interfering with the operation of the cooperatives/collectives listed in this Initiative.”