MAILBAG - Aug. 18, 2006

Puzzled by marijuana dispensary laws

As a resident of Laguna Beach and a registered voter, I am in favor of permitting other Lagunans the opportunity to obtain the medical marijuana they need. Since there are no violations, why prohibit this activity.

It seems to me the voters in California, as well as several other states, have voted to allow the dispensaries to function.

Why would the police chief and the City Council both decide to end this program without input from the citizens of Laguna. Well, I ask this question because ultimately we as citizens have decided to allow it. I guess our city leaders don’t want to be dissuaded from their view.

BILL ATKINS

Laguna Beach

Crackdown has big ramifications

No, the city has no legal right to “crack down” on a legitimate medical practice that is operating within the bounds of California state law. Especially one that provides much needed relief to people suffering the debilitating effects of cancer and HIV treatments.

This would be tantamount to having the police stake-out Sav-On (CVS) demanding that pharmacy customers produce copies of their doctor’s prescription for other controlled pharmaceuticals like Vicodin, Percoset, Valium, etc... It may also be a violation of HIPAA for the city to interfere with the doctor/patient relationship, especially if the policy is placing people in the position of having to publicly divulge their “Protected Health Information,” as defined by this law.

Secondly, the city should be very careful about passing an ordinance that would “prohibit the city from issuing business licenses to businesses that are “illegal or unlawful under city, state or federal law.”

It seems to me that the passage of such an ordinance could put the Cross Cultural Council and the Day Labor Center out of business.

DAN CAVANAUGH

Laguna Beach

Criminalizing it is hypocritical

The City of Laguna Beach should not crack down on medical marijuana dispensaries. City officials, including the elected City Council and the City of Laguna Beach law enforcement establishment and Bush & Company, continue to waste enormous resources on their “war” against medical marijuana.

Does not everyone see the hypocrisy of Bush & Company enjoying shots of their favorite hard liquor at a White House reception, while at the same time prosecuting those who use medical marijuana?

We should allow anyone, for any reason, to carry and use small amounts of marijuana and allocate our limited law enforcement resources to go after more serious crimes and societal issues.

If those backing the decriminalization of marijuana had powerful lobbyists with deep pocketbooks donating to political campaigns, marijuana would be decriminalized.

If we decriminalized marijuana, like most civilized nations in the world, street drug dealers and the violent crime associated with it would have no competition and the government would get revenue through taxation. Just like tobacco and alcohol.

How many people die from drunk driving accidents and lung cancer and second-hand smoke a year?

When was the last time someone lost their mind and went “postal” and injured people after ingesting marijuana? When was the last time you heard of a driving-while-on-marijuana traffic-related fatality?

Until marijuana is decriminalized, we don’t live in a true, free democracy. We have a government that rules through fear. People are even afraid to speak out on this issue for fear they will be added to some government or even local Laguna Beach police database. You can print this with my first and last name.

More people need to not fear to speak out on both a national and local level. That’s democracy in action.

JOHN SZABO

San Clemente

Zero-tolerance for trash on our beaches

Don Romero’s letter (Coastline Pilot, July 21) regarding trash on our beaches was a great start to addressing an unnecessary and too familiar problem. For the last few years, I’ve also been bummed by the garbage littering our beautiful beaches and streets. I have long thought of ways to change this.

Not only is Thalia a problem, but so is Oak Street, where kids go to the beach daily in the summer and keep their personal stuff at the steps. The same goes for Sleepy Hollow and the Vacation Village Hotel’s beach, which I’ve heard locals sadly refer to as “trash beach.”

I’m fortunate to have my office at Oak Street and go to the beach daily. I’m amazed our kids are leaving trash wherever they settle during the day, especially with the heightened awareness of our embattled environment. It brings to mind the call to save the environment for our kids. In some ways, we need to save it from them.

We owe our beaches and ocean, our town and visitors — as well as ourselves — clean streets and beaches, and the education to go with it.

Here are some suggestions to eliminate trash from our city.

1. Parents: When you drop your kids at the beach, remind them to throw their trash away. And their friend’s trash, too, if necessary. Remind them it is their community and their beach.

2. Could Laguna Beach High School give community service credits for a beach clean-up organization? Is there an environmental class of any sort being taught? A clean environment begins at home. These would be worthy endeavors.

3. Laguna kids (and parents) on the beach: Help your town and your ocean. Clean up after yourselves. Parents and kids alike should speak up to one another to pick up and politely remind others around them to do so, including those who visit our beaches.

4. Laguna lifeguards: Can they help? As they are the front-line stewards in the public eye, I feel they owe more to the beach. Certainly, their paramount responsibility is watching the surf, but it appears they could also lead the way periodically during their shift in the tower by talking to people about cleaning up after themselves.

Many times I’ve been amazed to see trash even under lifeguard towers for the entire day going unnoticed by the guard. There should be a zero-tolerance policy for trash in our city, especially among city workers.

At shift changes, when guards run from tower to tower, they can easily pick up trash along the way. I do when I run.

5. Remind smokers that it is illegal to do so on the beach.

6. City of Laguna Beach: The city should have a much more comprehensive and aggressive trash pickup program. Make it easier for people to throw their trash away. There are far too few trash cans in Laguna, especially on and around the beach

Put cans at the bottom of all access steps to beach, as well as under or next to each lifeguard tower. Brand it with the City of Laguna Beach logo and a “Keep Laguna Beach Clean” slogan or “Don’t Trash Our Beaches” (similar to the one on the towers).

Sell sponsorship or ad space on the trashcans as Huntington seems to.

Rather than picking up these cans from the street above, as it is currently done, pick up early morning daily at low tide all new cans with a trash truck along the beach.

7. Gutters and drains: How many times have you seen a smoker throw their cigarette into one of these which drain to the ocean, or seen trash around one? All gutter drains should be re-branded “Drains to Ocean!” and a mesh screen should be affixed to the front of each one to keep trash from going down.

8. Laguna Beach Police Dept.: Be beach stewards, as well.

Send one or two patrol officers along the beach morning and afternoon to politely remind people to pick up their trash. Write tickets, if necessary. I’ve personally spoken to smokers who don’t know about or ignore the smoking law and also toss their butts in the sand.

9. Laguna businesses: Stores, restaurants, hotel owners and managers, undoubtedly it is your town, too, so you share a profound obligation to act as stewards to the area in which your business operates — particularly to our guests who have chosen Laguna to visit or vacation.

For instance, hotel operators should graciously educate their vacationers about picking up their personal trash. Failing that, they should daily be expected to clean up after their patrons or be ticketed by the police department beach stewards.

10. Construction sites: Laguna is in the middle of a rebuild/remodel cycle. We’ve all seen the trash around the sites that accompanies the crews and the unattended residence or storefront. Witness Wahoo’s. For the past few months (as I write this letter) Wahoo’s abandoned storefront is littered with all sorts of debris and trash.

Regardless of who’s responsible, it should be incumbent upon the business owner to clean up after the crew he’s hired and the job site. Likewise, the homeowner should be responsible for their site.

If each of us picked up litter in our day, we could solve the problem, too. No one should ever come to see trash on the beach, in the water and on the street as normal or natural.

It’s our town and our beach. Join me in fighting to keep it clean.

CHIP McDERMOTT

Laguna Beach

Not sorry for not wanting growth

Property rights are not inalienable, regardless of refutations to the contrary. Nuisance laws are a legitimate, legal rebuttal, coming into existence hundreds of years ago and have evolved into a basic premise: You may not use (read develop) your land to the diminishment, detriment or injury of the parcels or persons adjacent to you. FDR’s “Good Neighbor Policy” was a political extension of that philosophy.

The checklist of potential degradations has also expanded as we learn more about irreversible adverse ecological impacts, especially cumulative ones noted in the National Environmental Protection Act. Our state version is the California Environmental Quality Act.

Laguna Beach is, to a certain degree, an island, a human sanctuary. So perhaps using this metaphor helps us view mansionization through the dark glass of obfuscation regarding pseudo-patriotic property rights advocacy when it collides with the realities of the lifeboat formerly known as Laguna.

Like an island, we are isolated and have limited resources: Our open spaces and sense of wilderness, our ocean, our air, our parking, our quiet neighborhoods, our very special “live and let live” Golden Rule social policies, which embraced varying lifestyles, are now threatened. Viewed as our rations, they are being depleted at a horrific pace.

Why should we allow or encourage more consumers, especially greedy ones who refuse to live in the same down-sized universe, [who don’t] accept the same conditions the rest of us did upon landing? Why are we being asked to embrace these outsiders who are poised to drain, eliminate or pollute all of the precious resources on our island?

Who said that being an American means pulling more bodies into this lifeboat, thus lessening our ships’ sustainable larder, endangering the lives of those already aboard? Why should we drown or capsize, pulled down by these additional bodies? Our lifeboat infrastructures are antiquated and can’t even meet the demands of our present passengers (residents). We can’t even afford to keep our beaches clean from the trash of present day residents’ impacts, let alone an increasing number of homeowners, plus their children and guests.

Why can’t our welcome wagon City Council just say: “No mas!” and at a minimum put either a slow or zero growth ordinance on the agenda? The Vision 2030 Environmental Sub-Committee supported such open public dialogue, now forgotten some six years later.

Those of us who moved here decades ago were visionaries, smart enough, crazy enough or fiscally prudent enough to move here first. Spinning this intent as denying others, a kind of metro-selfishness, is hogwash. Having this type of foresight should mean never having to say you’re sorry.

The fun zone, this island Laguna, is filled to the brim and bulging at the seams. All biological systems have carrying capacities, that is adequate space and proper nutrients to support an ultimate population limit. We’ve reached ours.

ROGER E. BUTOW

Laguna Beach

Day Labor site a humane solution

Having a day labor site does not affect immigration one way or another. The fact that Laguna has one does not make it a destination for would-be immigrants.

After all, desperate immigrants are willing to break immigration laws, become enmeshed in bureaucratic red tape, suffer through a life-threatening trek, give coyotes their life savings, leave their family and familiar life style and avoid racist vigilantes.

The existence of a day labor site is not going to change this trial by fire. Immigrants come here out of a hope that there are jobs. Any kind will do. It is hope and necessity that drives them. This courageous journey to put food on their tables will continue, whether a day labor site exists or not.

For years these immigrants came when there was no day labor site, desperate individuals skulking in oil-stained parking lots waiting to overwhelm intimidated employers.

Seeing them treated like sub-human detritus was a civic and moral embarrassment. How could we consider ourselves civilized? And Christian to boot? Was being a “Good Samaritan,” or a “Brother’s Keeper” just so much Biblical mythology? What a debasement of Christian theology! What would Jesus have done? Would he have joined the Border Angels or Minutemen? What hypocrisy!

In a rare moment of civic wisdom, Laguna’s creation of the site was both an act of charity, as well as a pragmatic solution similar to the union hall of the ‘30s and ‘40s. It worked then and it works now. The City Council has made the best of an unfortunate situation... a model for other cities to follow. The site provides the immigrant with a modicum of self-respect and the local citizens can solve their labor problems with a degree of civility.

So what are the real issues that bring the likes of Jim Gilchrist out from under their rocks? They have always wanted Laguna to quit subsidizing the site because “Americans do not benefit enough,” for them it is a question of economics.

This is so outrageous it is hard to respond. However, if it is not obvious enough by now, Laguna needs the immigrants to fuel its service and building industries. There are no other choices. Non-immigrants will not fill the bill.

For several reasons, they have little taste for entry-level work, even at higher wages. President Reagan discovered this a long time ago with his failed bracero program. What, then, is an employer going to do? In states like Washington, farmers raising strawberries have to bury their crops because their workers are being scared off by the self-appointed vigilantes at the Mexican border. Likewise, Florida’s citrus crops are threatened without the necessary labor. Where are the non-immigrants lining up to take these jobs? Where is their day labor site?

Since Gilchrist’s notion of a “lack of benefit” has clearly not gained sufficient traction, they have turned to a careful search of the city’s archives to find a fatal flaw. And, for a moment, they thought that they had found something. It seems that the tiny piece of land the site sits on is owned by Caltrans and it doesn’t want to assume the responsibility that a job site entails. Both the city and the state made a mistake. It was not intended.

However, Laguna got a year’s reprieve, long enough to relocate the workers somewhere else if necessary. The city has the will to do what is right. Nonetheless, the [opponents] will not be dissuaded. They are on a racist mission. I am sure their search for other reasons to send the brown faces back home will continue, no matter what hurdles they face.

Laguna, on the other hand, must dig in and continue to behave in a righteous, responsible manner. Indeed, the site is a “sanctuary.” That is a good thing, not a bad one. It does not alter the immigration process. Rather, it fosters a kind of humanism similar to the Medieval Christian cathedral.

In a small way the Day Labor Site has lifted the human spirit. And I am proud to be a part of it.

GENE COOPER

Laguna Beach