PD on Cannabis Snafu: Tsk tsk tsk

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat editorial Dec.18 expressed dismay about the state of the Cannabis industry in California. The PD exonerated the politicians and blamed the proponents and funders of Proposition 64 — the “Adult Use of Marijuana Act” — approved by voters in 2016. According to the PD, “To be clear, the Legislature didn’t make a hash of the recreational cannabis market. Proposition 64 was drafted by people who saw profit potential and didn’t want to wait for Sacramento. But any fix almost certainly will fall to the Legislature.”

The PD line elicited a letter to the editor from Dale Gieringer of California NORML which they may or may not run: “Marijuana interests did not fund Prop 64. If they had, it may have actually turned out to be profitable for them. Prop 64 was funded by Facebook billionaire Sean Parker and written by a team of consultants who had no interest in Cannabiz. The legislature in fact bears responsibility for making a hash of the cannabis market. Before Prop 64 was finalized, it passed the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act (MMRSA), which imposed a complicated, unwieldy regulatory structure over every aspect of the industry. The architects of Prop 64 perforce adopted this structure, and were further influenced by a Blue-Ribbon Task Force overseen by the lieutenant governor. Prop 64 is another unfortunate example of California government’s penchant for over-regulation and overtaxation which have rendered it so dysfunctional in recent years.”

CaNORML is a “player” in the political arena, and Gieringer goes out of his way to not step on any important toes. The Act called MMRSA was steered through the legislature by then-Assemblyman Rob Bonta, who is now Attorney General. It was pronounced “Mersa” until O’Shaughnessy’s reported that to medical professionals, “Mersa” meant Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcusaureus, an infection not treatable by antibiotics. When I pointed this out to Bonta’s aide Max Mikilonas he seemed upset and blurted out “No no no no no! ‘Mersa’ came from the Governor’s office. The whole thing came from the Governor’s office.” 

That would have been Jerry Brown.

The politicians avoided further embarrassment by quickly decreeing that the word “marijuana” would be replaced immediately in all State of California regulations and documents, by “cannabis.” MMRSA became MCRSA, which they pronounced Mao-cursor.

The Blue Ribbon Task Force that supposedly “influenced” the legislators did that not include an MD who had experience with cannabis as a medicine. Hearings were held in a few cities, ”overseen,” to quote Gieringer, by Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom. It was a meaningless dog-and-pony show.

The “marijuana interests” that Gieringer implies were excluded from the drafting of Prop 64 could have gotten an initiative on the ballot without kowtowing to Sean Parker and George Soros (whose Drug Policy Alliance helped draft AUMA). Two Bay Area dispensaries — Harborside and the Berkeley Patients Group — were “liquid enough” in 2015 to finance a successful campaign, according to Jeff Jones, the longtime director of Oakland’s Patient Resource Center. (Jones, an unsung hero of the medical marijuana movement, founded the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Club in 1996. The OCBC was soon closed down by the Clinton Administration, but that’s another story — or another chapter of the same big story.) 

Back in 2015 Dale Sky Jones, the chancellor of Oaksterdam University (and Jeff’s wife), along with Gieringer, Ellen Komp, Debby Goldsberry and other grassroots activists, had organized a “Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform” to draft a legalization measure that would be in their constituents’ interests. When Harborside honcho Steve DeAngelo and the ownership group that had wrested control of Berkeley Patients Group from Goldsberry refused to back the activists’ initiative, they looked hopefully towards the Drug Policy Alliance, the outfit funded by George Soros that had usurped leadership of the Prop 215 campaign from Dennis Peron and friends back in ‘96. There was a dramatic conference at a hotel in Oakland in January, 2015, at which Bill Zimmerman, a Santa Monica flack on the DPA payroll, told the assembled activists that Team Soros would arrange funding for legalization initiative — and take over the drafting Attorney Expressions of outrage from attorney Bill Panzer and other Bay Area reformers did not change the course of events. I covered that climactic meeting and laid out the story for O’Shaughnessy’s. (Google “BeyondTHC.com Zimmerman Heart DPA”). How I got talked out of running it in the paper by a two-faced associate is another story.

In any event, Dale Gieringer is much more practical and much more capable of forgiveness than your correspondent, and the Press Democrat editorial is much, much worse than his Letter to the Editor indicates. The PD editors seem proud that their paper didn’t support Proposition 215, which “offered next to no guidance about cultivation and distribution, banking and product safety, environmental degradation from illegal grows, or much of anything else.” (All Prop 215 did was end 70 years of marijuana prohibition in the US and inspire recognition worldwide that Cannabis is a medicinal herb, not the devil’s favorite plant.)

The PD went on: “State lawmakers looked the other way through almost two decades of chaos until state Sen. Mike McGuire and Assembly Jim Wood spent most of 2015 clearing the smoke and crafting a comprehensive seed-to-sale regulatory system... Proposition 64 has recreated the Wild West that McGuire and Wood set out to tame.”  McGuire and Wood were among the legislators who took credit for MMRSA. I mean MCRSA. They are as blameworthy as Newsom.

You would never know from the sanctimonious editorial that executives of the Press Democrat had invested millions in a company called CannaCraft as of 2016. The publisher of the PD (and the Sonoma Index-Tribune) is Darius Anderson, who is also founder and CEO of Platinum Advisors, a high-end lobbying firm whose clients include PG&E and CannaCraft. His brother Kirk Anderson was the Chief Operating Officer of CannaCraft from 2016 through 2018. Sonoma Lab Works, a Cannabis testing lab was located in the same building as CannaCraft's Santa Rosa HQ. It's illegal for a lab to be affiliated with a company whose products it is testing and it was widely thought the separation between the company and the lab was a paperwork sham.

Sonoma Lab Works ceased operations abruptly last week, laying off 25 employees with no severance pay. “The lab’s owner, businessman Darius Anderson, could not immediately be reached for comment,” according to reporter John Schroyer of the excellent Marijuana Moment website. The groan heard from the Press Democrat was hardly a coincidence.

Although it's true that Sean Parker put up most of the money, the proponents of AUMA sought and received financial support and endorsements from businesses that had activist cred — Harborside, WeedMaps, and CannaCraft among them. Before the wording was filed with the Secretary of State there was a meeting at which owners of these companies met with Parker and signed off on it. I asked CannaCraft’s Tiffany Devitt-Lee how she could endorse a 15% excise tax on a medicine. She deflected the question by saying “I found Sean Parker a little Ausbergery.”  I had never heard that word before.