US: California mayor wants medical marijuana garden in the heart of downtown

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Greg Campbell

Dscriber

Wednesday 14 Apr 2010

If there is an award for most proactively pro-pot city leader, it will likely be given to the mayor of tiny Dunsmuir, Calif., He is proposing that an unused lot across the street from a sheriff's substation in the middle of the historic downtown be put to use as a pot garden. He hopes to lease the land, which he owns, to a medical marijuana cooperative, which will use high-tech greenhouses to grow its medicine.

"We're trying to bring the growing of medical cannabis out of the darkness of an underground market and into the legal light," Peter Arth told his local newspaper. Dunsmuir's Siskiyou County, in Northern California, is no stranger to marijuana. In an application for federal funds to fight illegal growing operations, the sheriff's office characterized the county's cultivation and trafficking problems as "significant." While most attention falls to the Emerald Triangle of Mendocino, Trinity and Humboldt counties, Siskiyou is also a major marijuana hub. Last fall, members of Siskiyou's Marijuana Eradication Team pulled up more than 200,000 plants in a single grow on national forest land near the Oregon border and the area is believed to be a hotbed of activity for Mexican drug trafficking organizations.

This is part of the reason Arth, who is a medical marijuana patient, said he wanted to grow marijuana more or less in the open. Patient-members of the collective would then know where their weed comes from. He said it's often hard for patients to know where medical marijuana is grown and by whom. Putting the grow operation dead in the heart of town would at least ensure that patients weren't paying organized crime syndicates when buying their medicine.

Naturally, there is opposition to the idea, primarily over security. With only 2,000 or so residents, Dunsmuir can't afford its own police force and contracts with the sheriff's office for part-time patrols that only amount to 20 hours per week.

"It'd be like putting $50,000 in an empty lot with a wooden fence around it," said Mario Rubino, a member of the town council. "That's going to draw a lot of attention."

The proposal will go before a planning commission on May 5 to determine if the greenhouses can be accommodated in the middle of the city's historic district before it heads to the town council for approval.

http://dscriber.com/greenzone/1540-california-mayor-wants-medical-marijuana-garden-in-the-heart-of-downtown.html

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