Hollister council members should respect federal law and
disapprove of a medicinal marijuana shop opening in an industrial
park near the airport.
Hollister council members should respect federal law and disapprove of a medicinal marijuana shop opening in an industrial park near the airport.
Local officials throughout California are overstepping their jurisdictional boundaries in authorizing these operations. Not only are they a front for legal, recreational use by most of their customers, but they also blatantly violate federal law.
This debate should stretch no further than a simple interpretation of the law. And there really is no room for interpretation – nor should there be. We advise Hollister City Council members to cite their own zoning laws that prohibit any operations in violation of state or federal law and turn away the Purple Cross Rx organization that has indicated interest in opening a shop here.
Since when did a local municipality have the right to trump federal law? This debate, which is swirling as of late with several communities throughout the state considering laws related to medicinal marijuana shops, shows a particularly convoluting consequence of the California proposition system.
State voters in 1996 passed the ballot measure to legalize medicinal marijuana with 56 percent approval. Supporters of the measure, and a majority of California voters, were ill-advised in believing the all-mighty and ultra-flawed proposition system gave citizens the right to revolt against federal authority.
Federal law classifies marijuana as an illegal narcotic. It would be no different from a legal perspective, though much less acceptable, if a California lobbying effort succeeded in getting a proposition passed legalizing cocaine, also classified as an illegal narcotic. It’s rather surprising that the United States Supreme Court hasn’t taken up and overturned the state’s legalization of medicinal marijuana.
That’s where the legal, moral and medical debate should occur – in Washington, D.C.
In Hollister, as long as the U.S. government and Federal Drug Administration view it as an illegal drug, council members can save a lot of time and energy by taking the discussion here no further than the city zoning code that stresses a respect for the law.
