One might say that the Long Beach City Council meeting of November 10th, 2009, was historic for the city, as we took one small step on the never-ending journey to better treating illness, minimizing suffering, and being increasingly rationally compassionate by taking a big one toward getting a city policy that says: Medical marijuana available here. (Must be a qualified patient. Terms and conditions may apply.)

One might also say that it was a frigging mess, as the meeting became bogged down in a substitute substitute spiral of motions, recommendations, requests, we’ve got a motion on the floor, will you make that a friendly amendment, what committee, committee, I withdraw my, point of order, committee?

But this is the way we’re moving forward. To this point we had put the issue on the table and gotten a draft ordinance—in many ways, a pretty crappy one. [Right here is where I’d insert some metaphor about dung being fertilizer, from whence springs etc., if I could think of one. It would be a great transition to the next paragraph.]

“This is messy democracy at its best,” said Daniel Brezenoff, First District Councilmember Robert Garcia’s legislative analyst. “I’m very proud of the Council. They worked together so well tonight in tackling this difficult issue. The way the City is moving forward on this is encouraging. We’re moving towards a rational and balanced public policy with courage and reason and cooperation. The councilmembers, the city attorney, the city prosecutor, the members of the public who came out and spoke—all deserve to be commended.”

But even if our current vector seems positive, do all of the principals deserve equal credit? Well, they say you can’t tell the players without a scorecard. So let’s (mix the metaphor and) go to school!

City Attorney: D
Robert Shannon submitted a draft ordinance completely disdainful concerning patient privacy, in the meeting defending it on probably legally flawed but certainly morally dubious grounds—basically: Don’t worry—I think we can get away with stripping away patient privacy more or less completely. Then there’s the giving police free rein to harass collectives. Bored? Pop into a collective and demand to see their video—no reason required! Etc. ad nauseam. Cristyl Myers soft-pedaled the disdain. Moreover, apparently hypnotized by L.A. County District Attorney Steve Cooley (who just said he’ll be looking to bust any collective selling medicine even if a city council passes an ordinance saying sales are okay—that guy gets an F, for sure!), their whole office is operating under the (mistaken, I believe) theory that all sales of marijuana are illegal under state law—and therefore they don’t want Long Beach to get one penny in tax revenue. Oh, and there’s this little bit at the end—7.87.100(D), to be exact—that says collectives can be shut down for breaking federal law . . . which, of course, includes dispensing marijuana for medical reasons. Sneaky. So why not an F? Because at least part of the reason they wrote what they wrote is at the behest of others. And at least they wrote something. And they’ll go back and write something better. But we’ll get to that.

City Prosecutor: C-
Tom Reeves could get no higher than a C from me because many of his recommendations for the ordinance were shameful (he’s no big fan of patient privacy, for starters) and his anti-medpot bias feels spooky (e.g., his apparent belief that a background that led him to be Long Beach chair of the “McCain for President” campaign couldn’t possibly have shaped his feelings and interpretation of medpot and its laws (during our Beer & Politics debate, he interpreted my suggestion that it might as my asserting that “Republicans are evil”); “dope.” But he made mostly cogent points during the brief bit of time he spoke, particularly as concerns the logistics of implementing any and all parts of whatever ordinance we end up with. It sounded almost as if he were saying: The more restrictive you make it, the more resources it will take to enforce—and you ought to weigh that in choosing your restrictions. It didn’t sound like an argument for or against—just the facts, ma’am.

First District: A-
Garcia gets it. He very politely pointed out a host of problems—the privacy thing, the unfettered police access, that it would be unreasonable to patients not to give collectives a grace period to become fully compliant with the ordinance once it becomes law. . . . It was his substitute motion that unanimously passed: the City Attorney is to provide another draft, with various parts of the ordinance to be removed, more cuts to come, more suggestions to be incorporated. The minus is for being a bit too polite in moments—but that’s his thing.

Second District: C
Suja said very little. It was the head cold, maybe. Or the attempt to straddle the political fence. (Keep in mind, for example, that of the four co-sponsors of the Aug. 4 recommendations that led to the draft ordinance, only Suja refused to comment on whether she wanted patient names to be turned over to the City.) Thanked the many members of the public who spoke on the issue, takes the concerns very seriously—something like that. Odd choice of Eskimo boots with the long flouncy skirt and nice black blouse. But they looked comfy. Hey, I get comfy. I just wish her love of comfort didn’t extend so far as trying to glide under the radar on this one. (Kind of ironic, considering that her silence seems to indicate she’s reluctant to allow patients to say off-radar.)

Third District: C+/B-
I guess I expected much worse from Gary DeLong (just as I hoped for better from Suja), but almost all parts of his original motion were incorporated into Garcia’s. When I heard him listing them off, I was surprised. He might have had a chance for a solid B (although I suspect he might have come to the meeting planning to earn a C-/D+, then gotten wise to how things were going and tacked to the left), but he was liking that bit about police getting to look at the security video for no damn reason at all. Without meaning to, he got the biggest laugh of the night by asserting that in analogous situations (although there really aren’t any—that’s part of the goof) he has never heard of a single case of police abuse. Bonus: He was the butt or a great line from District 7 (see below).

Fourth District: I (Incomplete)
I don’t think Patrick O’Donnell said ten words. I think he came to the meeting expecting to get an F or something, then heard what was going down and decided the best thing he could do was keep quiet.

Fifth District: C
About 48 hours earlier Ms. Schipske had mentioned the possibility of one of her proposed additional recommendations leaving Long Beach medpot patients with no collectives allowed within city limits: “With the proliferation of dispensaries in L.A. County, they [could] get it elsewhere.” But she acted as if this had never come to her mind—since on this night clearly it was a foregone conclusion she would never get it—and instead talked about the importance of making sure patients are allowed edibles. (It turns out it’s probably not the case that anyone was trying to prohibit these. Several of us may have been confused by the language on this point.) She definitely bogged the process down near the end, and her position on the overall issue is iffy, but what are ya gonna do?

Sixth District: B?
I’m not sure what Dee Andrews knows about this issue, but he’s not paid to be a pharmacologist nor a lawyer, but to do right by his constituents. He didn’t say much, but his heart seems clearly in the right place: I think he wants patients to get whatever medicine they need. Period. ‘Nuff said.

Seventh District: ??? + half a letter grade
Ms. Uranga was definitely one of the boggers-down, and her issues seemed to be all over the map—so much so that I can’t guess right now at how much of the ground she trod was covered for political reasons and how much for humanistic ones . . . nor how much even she is sure of her footing in either area. But you also get the sense that at the end of the day she is interested in helping patients. Extra Credit: Tonia, too, was surprised that DeLong had so much to say, so many concerns, “considering that you were on the committee [that helped develop the draft ordinance] and didn’t say any of this.” Funny. (Note: I may not have gotten her exact words right.)

Eighth District: A-/B+
Gabelich did some of the bogging herself, but at one point, in a very quiet, no-frills, businesslike manner, went down through the ordinance, reading for the City Attorney her long list of objections, what she’d like eliminated—striking out most all of the offending passages. Her intentions seem clear.

Ninth District: A+++++++++++++
Val Lerch had to wear two hats—neither of which he liked. In the absence of the mayor (Saudi Arabia, for some reason), Vice-Mayor Lerch had to run the meeting, a meeting that was a bear to run because of its messiness being of that aforementioned frigging magnitude. It was also a meeting that Val, in the most human moments of the entire proceedings, made it clear that, in the big picture, was patently ridiculous—no: offensively ridiculous—to be having, to need to have at all. I’d rather not directly quote anything he said, because you should go here and hear it for yourself; but he stated what is obvious to reasonable people: Marijuana helps people, so dispense it like you do all other medicine . . . which, by the way, is most always far more dangerous than marijuana . . . which, by the way, is far less dangerous than alcohol, which we sell everywhere (e.g., near schools) just for the hell of it, etc. This may not have seemed directly germane to the issue at hand . . . except that it really, really is. Nonetheless, he had that other hat, so he quietly exchanged the two, took back the leadership of this meeting he wanted to part of, got the motion, got the vote, let’s move on to the next step.

The Local Media: C
It was reported right here on lbpost.com and elsewhere that a draft ordinance was passed—and basically you had to have left the council chamber or fallen asleep before the end of the meeting to believe that, because it’s absolutely not the case. In fact, you have to search pretty carefully to find an account that doesn’t contain at least a few factual errors. Then you find the occasional report like the Beachcomber‘s Nov. 20 article, which gets the very few details it mentions about the meeting right but dedicates about half the column inches to whatever medically suspect “information” the author could dig up about how bad bad bad marijuana is for you, relying almost exclusively on two sources: a columnist with a degree not in medicine but in “Education for General Purposes”; and a book that touches upon marijuana only by way of an examination of the minds of mass murderers and serial killers. I mean, really? Generally you don’t find any so-called reportage that irresponsible, but sensationalism is in the air. The good news? The coverage is there. If we can just get it all unbiased (unless the author is willing to admit his/her bias) and accurate (which it can be even if the author is biased—a case I’d like to think holds here).

***

An integral part of this moment in this journey was the small mass of humanity that came out (as they have done and will continue to do) to speak to this matter—patients, caregivers, collective management, scientists, attorneys, concerned citizens, et al. It’s not clear exactly what the eventual city laws on medpot would look like sans our participation in the process; it’s clear generally that they would be a helluva lot worse than they will be when all is said and done. It’s a lesson in how things change. Participate in the process, and you’re more likely to see the changes you want (or at least to get better changes than you might have gotten otherwise). You have every right not to participate and then whine about how things would be a lot better if the world were more like you think it ought to be. But you also have every right to make an effort to give yourself less to whine about. And the chances to do so are everywhere. Sometimes all you need to do is show up.

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