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Indybay Feature

Defend Modesto Medical Marijuana

by DAAA Collective (modanarcho [at] yahoo.com)
Don't let the city of Modesto shut down Medical Marijuana stores! Email and call the city Attorney!
Last Sunday, the Modesto city council, which includes only one woman, and no people of color, met to discuss the fate of Modesto Medical Marijuana store "California Healthcare Collective Inc.", and any of possible stores. A murmur of fear has seemed to have swept through the cities elites and conservative folks, as old and sickly folks toke it up and finally get hungry. With sickly folks now smoking weed, what’s next? According to Michael Milich, there will be chaos in the streets, and cancer patients gone wild. City Council members were also concerned about how it would look to young people, with the police telling them one thing, and their neighbor doing the other. What’s a drug war to do when it’s okay if you’re sick, but it’s not okay if you’re 17? With around 20-30 people in the audience, (many in wheelchairs and crutches), many people made an important stand against a proposed ban on stores, and spoke in favor of medical marijuana as a drug that heals and helps, instead as one man stated, "rots my stomach".

If the store is closed down, many people will be left with few options, all of which are bad. One, if that they will risk buying weed on the street, which could lead to arrest, getting bad weed, or being shot or robbed. Some patients will go to Oakland, but not all can afford or are able to. Other patients will go back to taking other drugs, which as many pointed out, have horrible side effects, and drive many to depression, suicide, and further sickness.

Market capitalism has created an endless supply of drugs that largely do not heal or help, but simply mask problems at the expense of people's health and pocket books. The war on drugs was and is a racist war on working class people, that locks up millions of people for non-violent offensives, for smoking and taking drugs that the rich can enjoy with little fear. When marijuana laws started, the goal was to use the laws as excuses to stop the tide of Mexican immigration. Now, the brush is much wider, effecting whole levels of poor and working people.

According to Modesto City Attorney Michael Milich in a report to the mayor, medical marijuana stores lead to "illegal drug activity, theft, robbery and burglary, and a concentration of marijuana use in public places". The examples Michael Milich gives, are of communities in which the medical marijuana problems have been blown out of proportion. Rocklin CA, which is listed in the report as a major example, is extremely untrue, according to a Non-Profit patient’s rights group that came to the Tuesday City Council meeting. According to the group, in Rocklin a drug dealer was sealing drugs in front of the store, when the store owner called the police. The police then went in and started hassling the owners. The media then arrived, and stated that the store had repeated problems with drug dealers. Beyond examples like this, the idea that a store that sells a herb that is available on every school yard, every alley, and in every other house, defies logic. It is based upon the idea that unless social order is kept, people might, gasp!, do things for themselves!

The war on drugs needs to end! Let the City Council and City Attorney know that you want the city government's hands off Modesto's Medical Marijuana!

Please, polietly call Mike Milich @ 577-5284
Email: mmilich [at] modestogov.com
For more info, go to: http://www.hempevolution.org/index.html
http://www.biodev.org/
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