Petition Drive Challenges Medical Marijuana Ban in Rural California County (Kern)

[alp227]

Source: NY Times

Kern County is not exactly the kind of place where you would expect a voter rebellion, what with its conservative rural residents, its live-off-the-land values and its almost unshakable devotion to the Republican Party.

But over the last several months, Kern County — about 100 miles north of Los Angeles and as far as it can get from San Francisco — has become the scene of a civil war of sorts over an issue, medical marijuana, whose supporters are often of a more liberal stripe. At stake is a controversial law — passed unanimously in August by the county’s all-Republican Board of Supervisors — which would have effectively shut many of the three dozen or so medical marijuana dispensaries in the county.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the ban: medical marijuana advocates started a petition drive to challenge it, calling for a referendum on the law, something that could happen as soon as next year. In the meantime, the law is in limbo.

And while such an effort is nearly unheard of in Kern — perhaps the first time in modern memory that anyone can recall a county law being so challenged — it is not the only place in California, the original medical marijuana state, where local regulation is meeting opposition. Laws passed in several other counties and cities have also been the subject of referendum movements, something permitted by California state law.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/us/medical-marijuana-ban-challenged-in-kern-county.html?pagewanted=all

[izquierdista]

1. Kern County

About 100 miles north of Los Angeles, right between Tulsa and Oklahoma City.

[XemaSab]

3. Considering that a hugh percent of the population were Okies

that's not far off at all.

[tularetom]

2. A little slice of Texas right in the middle of CA

It's the county where I first saw the light of day but it's a real redneck kind of place where oil and farming are the basis of the economy.

In recent years a lot of Los Angelenos have moved north over the grapevine to Kern and challenging the power structure that for decades has been dominated by the good ol boy merchant class with a smattering of Dust Bowl refugees and an even tinier smattering of Hispanics occasionally finding their way onto City Councils, school boards and water districts in the rural areas.

These LA refugees have been welcomed with open arms by developers, car dealers and everybody else who wants to make a buck off them. But they will throw a bucket of sand into the gears of the local political machinery and eventually come to be a political presence in the county.

IMO the challenge to the medical marijuana ban is the first shot fired across the bow and it's about time.

[Tempest]

5. Kern County has Texas like problems

Highest teenage pregnancy rates in the state.
Highest teenage STD rates in the state.
Lowest levels of education in the state.
Fewest college graduates in the state.

The list goes on.

[Tempest]

4. Kern County, home of one of the most corrupt legal systems in America

Ed Jagels, the recently retired D.A. has had dozens of convictions tossed because of prosecutor misconduct with the complicity of the Sheriff's department.

Being poor and/or a minority is a guaranteed ticket to a false conviction in this county.

[Uncle Joe]

6. What Mr. Youngblood fails to realize is that his concerns are primarily caused by prohibition policy

not cannabis.

But Sheriff Youngblood says that marijuana has been a destructive force in his county, destroying public lands — where growers often plant — and bringing into an otherwise largely peaceful rural environment an influx of weapons as a result of what he says are criminal cartels involved in the drug trade. He has conducted several major raids this year, including one in September that netted more than 2,100 plants near the town of Wasco.

Thanks for the thread, alp.