Newsom proposes marijuana crackdownBy Steven T. Jones
The Examiner reports that Mayor Gavin Newsom is proposing a crackdown on the city's medical marijuana clubs, including requiring them to keep detailed patient records that advocates say could easily be used by the federal government to prosecute people for smoking pot, which is legal under California law but not under federal law.
And once again, it appears that Newsom's increasingly conservative approach to policing and regulation is being driven by his top crime adviser, law-and-order Republican Kevin Ryan, the former US attorney who was fired for incompetence by the Bush Administration despite his deep political loyalty to Bush and the GOP. Ryan, who led the federal government's war on drugs against San Franciscans (including an overzealous prosecution of Ed Rosenthal), is quoted by the Examiner trying to justify going well beyond recent state guidelines.
Newsom's office didn't respond to our questions, but the latest proposal is directly at odds with the city's innovative approach to regulating the clubs, which had among its central tenets protection of patient privacy and wariness of giving the federal government information that could be used to prosecute San Franciscans.
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Comments (3)
I am not surprised that the "run away Mayor" dodged questions. He has yet to STOP and listen to his constituets, or sall I say Voters..........
If Clubs are to be regulated, it's equivelent to the tracking methods the Natzis used on the Jews. Regulate trvle, nd trfficing of goods.
Am I the only one who knows history?
Posted by Elihu Hernandez | October 11, 2008 04:21 PM
What I find STUNNING is how the state of California voted overwhelmingly to LEGALIZE medical marijuana. Now all of a sudden we are seeing a reversal of fortune as the Federal Government uses it's conservative whip to punish California for not being in line w the "Chrstian Race Federation" (aka the GOP, aka the Redneck Army).
Posted by Captain Freedom | October 21, 2008 07:06 AM
San Francisco I Am has a great video on whether illegal cannabis clubs are really hurting medical marijuana patients with California Attorney General's recent crackdown down on medical cannabis clubs.
You can check out the video here:
http://www.sanfranciscoiam.com/videos/0faa12024b6c
San Francisco Iam also has a lot of other interesting video journalism bringing us stuff that the mainstream media isn’t.
Posted by tedlow | November 25, 2008 01:41 PM