The politically minded or those planning to vote in Chula Vista may be familiar with Andrew, Mark, John, Glen, Mary, Hector, Jill and Steven — candidates seeking public office in next Tuesday’s election.
But the contest I’m most interested in is the one featuring Mary Jane.
I don’t know when or why that became the sobriquet — along with grass, pot, weed and marijuana — for cannabis but I do know that Rick James decades ago wrote a song about it (her?) and it wasn’t until I was well into my 20s I learned he was actually singing about marijuana. The lyrics include these lines:
I’m in love with Mary Jane.
She’s my main thing,
She makes me feel alright,
She makes my heart sing.
How many young men at one time in their lives didn’t feel this way about a lady with whom they were smitten, even if her name wasn’t Mary Jane?
Chula Vista’s Measure Q, which voters are voting on next Tuesday, asks residents to decide if they want to impose a business license tax on all commercial cannabis activities within Chula Vista.
Though California legalized the sale and use of recreational marijuana in 2016, Chula Vista has been slow in arriving to the garden party.
It was only this year when the City Council crafted policies and guidelines addressing how canabis retailers would operate. While people could still purchase pot outside city limits and use it in the comfort of their Eastlake homes, for example, there were no provisions addressing how people could get their cannabis in town legally.
Medical marijuana dispensaries had already been operating in the city illegally and the city has not been able to keep up with the fungus-like way in which another outlaw shop popped up when one was shut down. The council, presumably, was trying to learn from the mistake it had made in not planning for the local market’s demand for weed.
Ultimately they came up with a policy that was contingent on the electorate’s approving a cut of the take. If legal dispensaries are to be allowed in the city then they are to be taxed like any other industry and the money would be used to enforce laws and other general fund expenditures.
They’ve capped the number of legal retailers at eight, two per council district. And they’ve set restrictions on where other cannabis-related businesses such as growing facilities can be operated.
Tax revenue is estimated at $6 million in the first year.
It will be interesting to see if voters are inclined to turn down a legal source of revenue to pay for a variety of city services or if they reject the money outright, leaving Mary Jane and her suitors out in the cold and in the tax-free shadows of the city.
