I'm glad to see medical cannabis dispensaries on your top 10 list ranking at no. 6. I am equally glad to hear that some 67 dispensaries are operating in your vicinity. It is a sign of tolerance, open-mindedness, and fairness. You will surely prosper in Colorado and Boulder/Broomfield Counties !!

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How does a restaurant parking lot have ties or is associated with the Oregon Medical Cannabis Program ?? The grow-house operations are tied to the Oregon Medical Cannabis program......How ??

I think they just want to connect the black-market to the new patient exemption laws and dispensaries in Oregon.

Nice try.

All good news from Seattle. A beacon to all American cities.

Go for it, Seattle !!!

Vote "YES" on McGinn & Dickerson !!

Well, since the jurisdiction of DC is now almost another 'medical cannabis state', we can see how our government deals with it up close and personal.
I agree with the author that this is one issue Obama can come out clean from and look good, all the while doing the right thing. Slowly tippy-toe towards marijuana decriminalization, like in Kerlikowske's old stomping grounds in Seattle - making pot a 'low-priority' crime for police to bother with. Issuance of citations and fines, without arrests and charges.
More tippy-toing towards medical cannabis exemption laws, 'til ALL 50 states have them in place. Then one by one states can legalize pot for adults and regulate it just like alcohol is regulated. California, Nevada, Colorado, and Michigan seem the most likely to legalize grass on their own; California has one or two on the ballot for 2010.
By late summer 2012, a few months before the 2012 general election, Obama can announce he will legalize cannabis across the board in all states and abolish prohibition of it. The young, the poor, the minorities will all show up en masse to re-elect him.

My point: It's up to us, citizens and voters, to make it an election year issue in 2010 and 2012.
Journalists and the press: help us do just that.

Great article, keep it up Kelley V., hope to read more by you.

The “afterlife” of combat includes divorce and despair, substance abuse and spousal abuse, joblessness and homelessness — and, in extreme cases, suicide.

Why don’t you reader’s look up how Israel and other countries (except the USA) are using cannabis boiled oil as a remedy for PTSD war vets with suicidal impulses. Go ahead, do a google search and see if you can find the articles that tell of the Israeli study and how they boil marijuana in vegetable oil. They strain it, and bottle it like cough syrup. The soldiers take it by tablespoons – it tastes rank – and there’s no smoking.

This method worked so well that other countries (not the USA) use this method for shattered war vets. Bosnia, Canada, New Zealand, England, France, Holland, Germany……even a country or two in Africa, I recall.

There is much terrorism and war in the world now; and it’s all over the globe. In America alone the suicide level has reached (as of 2005) about 100 soldiers a week. That’s right, about 100 vets kill themselves EACH WEEK here at home, and we refuse to use the known technique discovered by the Israelis.

A cheap, easily available, efficacious remedy is at hand, yet we in Puritanical America refuse to use it. Our politics are too 19th century. And after all, these soldiers made a tremendous sacrifice then, and now, so that we could have $3.00 gasoline and some revenge for the 9/11 bombings. They’re dropping like flies here at home, months after discharge. The greedy in government finance must think it will cost less in the long-run if they just die. A cheap, throw-away commodity.

Ask why, ask your elected officials ‘WHY’ ???

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The VA is decidedly NOT ready; especially if 30,000 troops are scheduled to go and return in 18 months. The influx today is already too great for them to handle.

Great news !! The AMA is finally 'coming out of the closet' and endorsing things that it should have stood up for long ago.

Many thanks to Eric Garcetti and the other council-persons who defied DA Cooley and City Atty Carmen T. and created a body of law to regulate the legitimate sale of medical cannabis in the greater LA area. Between 70 - 200 stores should generate quite a bit of revenue for the state, and the city. And people nearby but outside Los Angeles who live where no dispensary exists can drive in to LA and get what they need.

I envision more liquidity for the city and county of L.A., and the state of California. Maybe civil servants who lost their jobs can get them back soon. And maybe parks, buses, and other public works will be improved with the money.

Sounds like a win-win deal to me. Except for Mr. Cooley and city atty Carmen T.

Fight the ban on dispensaries, Americans for Safe Access !! Why don't these localities realize the state sales tax revenues would boost California's sagging coffers ?? They would provide jobs, and give legitimate patients safe access to the medicine which they sorely need.
I think most California cities and counties that are banning or fighting the dispensaries are doing so with this irrational misguided logic: they think the dispensaries would attract robberies, criminals, vagrants, loitering, and ruin neighborhoods.
If this be the case, then why not ban all convenience stores, liquor stores, bars, and jewelery stores ??

The answer seems simple enough to me: Regulate the dispensaries and make certain 'public safety features' mandatory. 1) a metal detector at the front door. 2) Armed licensed security guards on premises. 3) Security cameras installed inside and out. 4) Roll-down type gates (like most jewelery stores have) for after hours. No loitering or smoking outside or around the perimeter for 50 yards. None located near schools. There's probably other ways to tighten security, but you get the point....

The real reason the banning communities are so against it is their 'old fogey' attitude. They still live in the 'reefer madness' mentality, and still want to appear 'clean' in God's eyes, albeit 17th century Puritanical and hypocritical at best. They are afraid of change. They are afraid of new ideas. Hopefully the courts will see this kind of 'selective business banning' is unfair, and convenience stores pose about the same danger as a dispensary would.

Take note of all supervisors and councilpersons who oppose these all over California and VOTE 'EM OUT in the next general election.

Oh, you mean for moralistic reasons they should deny it, even though it generates money. I got you. Actually, gambling is legal in California as the Lottery, the Indian Reservations, and nearby in Lake Tahoe. Next door to us, in Nevada, both gambling AND prostitution is legal, has been and always will be.
But you're right, we should ban things that are immoral. We should have banned all nuclear weapons manufacture in the 1950s. Currently there are over 15,000 nukes in the world. America is still the largest gun manufacturer in the world, and somehow our guns always wind up in the worst hands. So do Russia's, Israels', and China's.
Something bad for people, and the environment, should not be sold to people, or released into the environment. 'High-fructose corn syrup' is very bad for people, causes diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. But they keep on spiking it in food and we drink it by the tons. Toxic waste dumps surround many industrial cities in the US - very bad for people and yet we tolerate too much.
So it would be good to stop and prevent bad things and bad conduct. And in a perfect world we wouldn't need medicines, cannabis, gambling, nukes, prostitutes, etc etc ad infinitum.
But it isn't a perfect world, and people are far from perfect.
In a perfect world no one would get sick, and crazies wouldn't fly airplanes into skyscrapers.

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