Thread: Law officers split on California legal pot fight

Law officers split on California legal pot fight

Updated 1h 9m ago
By William M. Welch, USA TODAY

LOS ANGELES — California's fall ballot battle over legalizing pot is drawing law-enforcement officials to both sides of the issue. Beer sellers want to stop legal marijuana, too, but say it's not because they fear competition.
Proposition 19, which if approved by voters in November, would make marijuana legal for recreational use by those 21 and older, though possession would still be a federal violation.

The first state in the USA to make marijuana legal for medical use, California would again set a new course for the nation on drug use if Prop 19 is approved.


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The sponsor of the proposition, Tax Cannabis 2010, says it will provide as much as $1.4 billion in tax revenue to the state, citing state estimates. Opponents say it would invite a public-safety nightmare with stoned workers and motorists.

Local law-enforcement leaders, including Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and the California Police Chiefs Association, oppose the measure. Obama administration drug czar Gil Kerlikowske has urged opposition, joined by his predecessors under three previous presidents.

"No country in the world has legalized marijuana to the extent envisioned by Proposition 19," they wrote in a Los Angeles Times column. "We can say with near certainty ...that marijuana use would increase if it were legal."

But supporters of Prop 19 have some law officers on their side. Former Seattle Police chief Norm Stamper argued for passage, saying current laws don't make marijuana less available but have made the trade profitable for Mexican drug cartels.

"This is really a law and order initiative," Oakland City Attorney John Russo said last week in endorsing Prop 19. "Arresting and criminalizing tens of thousands of Californians every year for misdemeanor possession diverts police ... from arresting and convicting violent criminals."

California Beer and Beverage Distributors, a trade group, gave $10,000 to the opposition campaign Public Safety First this month.

Backers of Prop 19 say the alcohol industry is trying to keep people drinking rather than puffing for recreation.

"They see this as competition," says Steve Fox, of the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington-based group that advocates legal marijuana. "By keeping one illegal, ... it increases the likelihood people will use alcohol."

"Absolutely not," responds Rhonda Stevenson, political coordinator for the California beer group. She says the proposal fails to establish state control over pot sales along the lines of alcohol laws and instead leaves pot regulation to cities and counties. "We have a (regulatory) structure they could have used but they chose not to," she said.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2 ... 1_ST_N.htm

Teamsters represent Calif. medical pot growers

Employees to get up to $25.75 an hour, pension, health insurance, vacation

By MARCUS WOHLSEN
updated 2 hours 17 minutes ago

OAKLAND, California — As organized labor faces declining membership, one of the United States' most storied unions is looking to a new growth industry: marijuana.

The Teamsters added nearly 40 new members earlier this month by organizing the country's first group of unionized marijuana growers. Such an arrangement is likely only possible in California, which has the loosest U.S. medical marijuana laws.

But it's still unclear how the Teamsters will safeguard the rights of members who do work that's considered a federal crime.

"I didn't have this planned out when I became a Teamster 34 years ago, to organize marijuana workers," said Lou Marchetti, who acted as a liaison between the growers and Oakland-based Teamsters Local 70. "This is a whole new ballgame."

The new members work as gardeners, trimmers and cloners for Marjyn Investments LLC, an Oakland business that contracts with medical marijuana patients to grow their pot for them.

Their newly negotiated two-year contract provides them with a pension, paid vacation and health insurance. Their current wages of $18 per hour will increase to $25.75 an hour within 15 months, according to the union.

Historically, the Teamsters are no strangers to entanglements with federal law enforcement, from the infiltration of the union by organized crime to the disappearance of union leader Jimmy Hoffa. If the federal government decided to crack down on Marjyn, Marchetti said the union was still figuring out how it might intervene.

Growing marijuana outdoors is not hard — the nickname "weed" is well-earned. Indoor growing operations require more know-how and more work. But the most labor-intensive part of the process comes at harvest time, when growers rely on small armies of trimmers to clip the plant's resin-rich buds.

The work can be difficult and the hours long — and trimmers cannot count on federal labor regulations to protect them while doing work banned under federal law.

Michael Leong, assistant regional director for the Oakland office of the National Labor Relations Board, said he did not know of any case in which the federal government had been asked to mediate a dispute involving a business that was blatantly illegal under federal law.

He also said it wasn't clear if the new Teamsters would count as farmworkers, which would put them outside the NLRB's domain.

Michael Lee, general counsel for the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board, said the growers probably would qualify as agricultural workers. Any conflict between workers and the union would likely fall under his board's jurisdiction, but contract disputes between workers and management would have to be decided in state court.

Even within the state, marijuana cultivation has remained in the shadows as retail dispensaries have flourished because California's medical marijuana law provides no clear rules for growing the plant.

The Oakland City Council sought to change that dynamic in July by making the city the nation's first to authorize industrial pot cultivation. More than 260 potential applicants have expressed interest in competing later this year for four permits for large-scale growing operations, said Arturo Sanchez, an assistant to the Oakland city administrator who will ultimately issue the permits.

Union membership will not be a requirement for receiving a permit, but labor standards are one of many factors that will be considered. The union organizing effort and contract negotiations went smoothly at Marjyn, which hopes to win one of the permits.

"There was no strife between employees and management at all," said a Marjyn worker who would only identify himself as Rudy L. because he worried about his personal security if it became known that he grew marijuana for a living. He said he was not worried about getting arrested because he believed Marjyn was operating in compliance with state law, though the threat of a federal crackdown is never far from anyone's mind.

About 100 workers in Oakland's retail medical marijuana dispensaries joined the United Food and Commercial Workers in May. The Teamsters have never tried to organize dispensary workers, because retail has never been an industry in which they have been traditionally involved, Marchetti said.

The Teamsters have long vied with the United Farm Workers and other unions to represent agricultural workers. So far, no other unions have competed with the Teamsters for the membership of medical marijuana growers.

Marchetti said the union would not have gotten involved with the growers if it didn't believe the business was legitimate under state law.

"The Teamsters would never organize an illegal business," Marchetti said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39278089/ns ... _business/

they are IN this for Money the gov don't care about Us just the Money

Four good reasons not to pass this legislation.

1. California's strict no smoking laws. Pot users will have nowhere to indulge, not inside high-density housing (neighbors) nor outside in cities and beaches - not permitted.

2. Imagine a mother in CA knowing her young children will be able to legally smoke dope when they grow up.

3. A rapidly increasing need for costly drug addiction counselors and health service providers the state will have to employ.

4. Stoned people in public, walking, driving and at work.

Teamsters represent Calif. medical pot growers

Employees to get up to $25.75 an hour, pension, health insurance, vacation

It pays good, but I don't have much of a green thumb.
Even my tomatoes didn't do good this year.