At the city council meeting the other night in National City, I felt it necessary to address the spurious, misleading and inaccurate accusations that were made by a few women who I have encountered at various city council meetings around the South Bay, and who, I note, are not even South Bay residents. They sounded as if they were lobbyists for Big Pharma, intent on denying medical and adult-use cannabis by keeping it out of the hands of local patients and informed adults.
Let me set the record straight.
First, the term we use is “cannabis,” because the name “marihuana” is a pejorative term coined in 1933 by the then head of the FDA (then the Federal Bureau of Narcotics), an avowed racist, Harry Aslinger, who thought it sounded “foreign and scary” because Mexican-Americans used that term. It paved the way for decades of laws allowing people of color to be disproportionately targeted and jailed. According to Business Insider Magazine, “in the first full year after the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act was passed, black people were about three times more likely to be arrested for violating narcotic drug laws than whites. And Mexicans-Americans were nearly nine times more likely to be arrested for the same charge.” Most of us know someone who was affected by the failed “War on Drugs” that has destroyed families through the mass-incarceration of so many Americans—mostly minorities. We, the citizens of California voted to legalize cannabis, partly to right this wrong.
Incidentally, cannabis has not always been vilified. For centuries it has been a reliable crop for medicine, rope and sails.The father of our country, George Washington, grew cannabis as one of his three main crops at Mt. Vernon due to the versatility of the plant. So did Benjamin Franklin and James Madison. Several current and former politicians and presidents have admitted to using during prohibition.
Next, according to no less an authority than the DEA, no deaths due to an overdose of cannabis have ever been reported. According to the NIH and Centers for Disease Control, this year 458 people will die from a Tylenol overdose and over 88,000 from alcohol abuse. One hundred thirty people will die today — and every day this year — from an opioid overdose, most of them either starting with or taking legal prescriptions. Those substances are readily available all over our city and country and pose much greater risks.
UCSD has an established medical cannabis research facility, funded by the State of California and currently conducting peer-reviewed medical studies on cannabis. We already know that cannabis has saved the lives of children with severe seizures, while also helping cancer patients who struggle to eat, just as it relieves arthritic and non-specific pain disorders, and relaxes those with anxiety issues. The Department of Veterans Affairs has issued directive 1315 for VA health care providers to discuss use of cannabis relief with veterans suffering from PTSD and other maladies, and assuring veterans that using cannabis will not put their VA benefits at risk.
According to BDS Analytics, there is evidence that sales of both prescription and over the counter pain killer use are down in states where cannabis products, which include tinctures, transdermal patches, beverage and edible forms of the plant, are legally sold – all of it in state-mandated child-proof packaging.
Property values have risen in neighborhoods that permit and allow cannabis retail dispensary storefronts, according to this initial study conducted in collaboration by several University Business Schools. The security and surveillance regulations required by the state ensures these businesses are locked down tighter than banks, which makes for safer neighborhoods.
Surprisingly, several studies show teen use is trending down in markets where adult-use of cannabis is legal.
Cannabis has been legal in Colorado, Washington and Oregon for several years, and those states appear to be adjusting and benefitting. Medical Cannabis has been legal in the city of Berkeley, California since the 1996 Compassionate Use Act passage. Desert Hot Springs in Riverside County, teetering on the edge of city bankruptcy for years, embraced the cannabis business by allowing and partnering with trustworthy small businesses in 2014 for medicinal use, and then expanded in 2017 under the new adult-use state laws. They have a thriving “Public Arts” program, considerable tax revenue, and are now breaking ground on a new LEED-Certified City Hall Building. Jobs are up. And crime is down.
It is not a matter of whether National City wants its residents to be allowed to access legal cannabis. Residents in National City and the entire South Bay of San Diego are already purchasing legal cannabis through a variety of delivery businesses and are paying 15.75% taxes to the city of San Diego instead of the city of National City where those dollars rightfully belong to fund our parks, schools, and law enforcement. We are still bearing the costs of prohibition unnecessarily. Those locally generated tax dollars – estimated in the millions of dollars per year – belong right here, not in San Diego. So do the higher-paying jobs that the cannabis industry can bring to National City residents.
National City will be making this decision soon. It’s important that its elected officials and civic leaders are accurately informed of the empirical data to allow them to lead the city forward to a better economic quality of life and civic future. It is indeed an idea whose time has come.
Wilkinson is the founder and CEO of AFC Products/Caligrown™. Named a “Top 10 Women in Cannabis to Meet”, she serves on the board of the South County Economic Development Council, provides active leadership for the National Cannabis Industry Association, and volunteers at the Living Coast Discovery Center. An SDSU Alumni and former radio and television personality in San Diego, she lives in the South Bay with her husband and rescue dog, Carmen.
