OUR VIEW: City Council, say no to moratorium (vote in poll)

The petition against medical marijuana stores failed so badly the organizers didn’t submit their signatures for validation. Organizers won’t say how many signatures they collected, which probably means not very many.

It’s hard to get signatures for a ballot measure that will solve no substantial problem and cause a host of them. Example? If we shut down marijuana stores, we will eliminate a substantial new stream of sales tax revenue that could save the grass in our parks or pay the wages of more cops. We’ll create vacant commercial space. We’ll force store owners and their employees into unemployment. We’ll cause hardship and higher prices for legitimate medical marijuana patients who are finally able to obtain the drug in the competitive open market, rather than the criminal market. If we forbid the taxpaying, rent-paying, fee-paying, regulated medical marijuana retailer we will do an enormous favor to the old-fashioned dope peddler, who has lost street corner sales to legal, storefront businesses.

People understand all of this, and that’s why it was hard to get them to sign the petition. Should a measure go to the ballot, it will almost certainly get trounced. Few people want to make a law that achieves poverty and hardship for law-abiding citizens, while pushing drugs back into neighborhoods and shifting economic advantage to black market crooks.

For some unimaginable reason, a few on City Council want a ballot measure to forbid medical marijuana stores even though the public declined the opportunity. City Councilman Darryl Glenn has said he will try Monday to get fellow council members to approve a ballot measure. The people behind the petition fiasco are from his district, so Glenn has taken up their cause. Despite his loyalty to constituents, it’s an odd position for Glenn. He’s a bright, highly educated lawyer and graduate of the Air Force Academy, so he must understand the ramifications of shutting down taxpaying businesses to the benefit of criminals. He’s a traditional conservative, which means he favors limited government. The late William F. Buckley Jr., often referred to as founder of the modern conservative movement, was a free-market conservative and a staunch supporter of full marijuana legalization. Why? Because it would kill off a black market trade that only costs society and replace it with a regulated trade that can be monitored and taxed — a trade that pays society, instead of bilking it.

(Please vote in poll to the right in red type. Must vote to see results. Thanks!)

A front-page story by Gazette City Hall reporter Daniel Chacón explained Friday that Glenn needs one more vote to get a medical marijuana store moratorium on the ballot. The most likely ally is Councilman Scott Hente, another bright Air Force Academy graduate. Hente and Glenn each espouse sincere, honorable and righteous opposition to marijuana and other drugs that are often abused.

Drug abuse is harmful, and should be condemned by politicians, parents and teachers at every turn. But opposition to medical marijuana stores is a lousy way to oppose drug abuse. Opposition to medical marijuana stores is de facto support for underground drug dealing, elimination of newfound revenues for City Hall and hardship for legitimate marijuana patients and those who rely on legal marijuana stores to make a living. Please, City Council, don’t support this costly idea.

— Wayne Laugesen , editorial page editor, for the editorial board. Friend him on Facebook