A WEEK before he went on vacation for the end of the year holidays, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed sat down with medical marijuana advocates James Anthony and Jerry Strangis. The Registrar of Voters (ROV) for Santa Clara County was still in the process of approving signatures from a petition drive for a referendum to repeal the city’s regulatory program, but everyone at the meeting expected the ROV to give its approval to the repeal effort.
On Dec. 30, it became official. Enough signatures had been gathered. The City Council could discuss the matter at a Jan. 31 meeting; eventually, though, the city must decide whether it wants voters to approve or deny its ordinance or find a compromise with medical marijuana advocates. For now, the latter course seems more likely.
Since the referendum could go to the ballot, the mayor says he would be happy with 25 dispensaries instead of a cap of 10, a number that opponents have called arbitrary. Reed also says he’s considering allowing clubs to cultivate off-site and scrapping the Black Friday first-come, first-served approach to collectives filing applications.
Anthony, who is co-chairman of Citizens Coalition for Patient Care, the group that organized a petition drive to repeal the ordinance, sounded weary when talking about the negotiation process, but he says he’s grateful for the city’s willingness to compromise.
“The mayor is a smart guy,” Anthony says. “I think he can probably come up with something workable. This stuff is really boring. We talk about commercial zoning. It’s like, ‘Really? This is what it’s come to?'”
But plodding negotiations may be necessary when it comes to regulating the quasi-legal industry so that cities can fly under the federal radar. In Long Beach, an appellate court recently voided the city’s decision to issue permits to dispensaries, ruling that by doing so, the city was regulating a criminal activity.
Meanwhile, in Oakland the IRS ruled that dispensary Harborside Health Center owes millions in taxes because they can’t deduct standard businesses expenses (like payroll and rent) as a business involved in “the trafficking of controlled substances.”
“In my view, the federal government has abdicated its responsibility to regulate drugs here. It’s the source of the problem,” says San Jose Councilmember Sam Liccardo. “This discrepancy between state and federal law has caused cities like Los Angeles—where hundreds of pot clubs operated last year—to consider banning medical marijuana altogether.”
That option isn’t off the table for San Jose, and would be just fine with San Jose Councilmembers Kansen Chu and Xavier Campos, who think marijuana collectives shouldn’t exist at all. But outlawing clubs isn’t likely to happen when the city has invested so much time and money into an ordinance—and when San Jose voters overwhelmingly approved taxing dispensaries to bring in millions annually in tax revenue.
Still, city staff must bring back recommendations for a compromise to the council no later than March 6, and there will be pushback. In addition to Campos and Chu, who can be counted as two “no” votes on a compromise, other “no” votes could come from Nancy Pyle (who previously suggested an all-out ban) and Rose Herrera, who’s working to be re-elected and might not want to support this issue.
Madison Nguyen and Sam Liccardo have been adamant about a cap of 10 and on-site cultivation, but they, like the mayor, may change their minds in light of the referendum. That’s somewhere between two and six “no” votes on a compromise.
On the other hand, City Councilmembers Ash Kalra, Don Rocha and Pierluigi Oliverio have been arguing for restrictions based on zoning for months. After all the disagreements that went on between those three and Reed last year, seeing the mayor enlist their help on a compromise would be a pretty big turnaround.
