Public Comment
Berkeley Patients Group - Bad Community Partner
No good community partner would situate a marijuana dispensary and smoking lounge one storefront from a public library, even if there was no technical prohibition.
No good community partner would situate a marijuana dispensary and smoking lounge closer than 600 feet to a Head Start school, even if there was no technical prohibition.
No good community partner would situate a marijuana dispensary and smoking lounge across the street from three stories of low-income family housing, even if there was no technical prohibition.
No good community partner would situate a marijuana dispensary and smoking lounge anywhere without talking to the neighbors at all until after signing a lease.
No good community partner would situate a marijuana dispensary and smoking lounge in a commercial district's most prominent storefront where the windows have to be blacked out, which subtracts from the nexus of products in storefronts that creates variety and interest.
No good community partner would run a marijuana dispensary and smoking lounge and insist that their security guard will "prohibit loitering", which is perfectly legal under Berkeley law. To do so would violate civil rights.
No good community partner would allow a marijuana dispensary to have a smoking lounge where employees will get heavy doses of involuntary exposure, a labor issue we thought we had won.
No good community partner would argue for a smoking lounge by spreading the fallacy that Berkeley apartment dwellers can't smoke marijuana in their units - they can. Berkeley's restrictions exempt marijuana.
No good community partner would situate a marijuana dispensary and smoking lounge that attracts between 800 and 1,000 customers per day before their planned expansion at the most congested, backed up intersection in both District 1 and District 2.
No good community partner would allow their marijuana dispensary customers to attend a Berkeley City Council meeting and light up, exposing everyone there, and just laugh about it. (The Berkeley City Council just laughed, too.)
Please call the Berkeley City Council and the Mayor. Our public health and planning policy should not be dictated by the wealthy cannabis industry. This isn't about helping people find a place to smoke - they smoke all over town without any interference or enforcement of our smokefree laws. This is just about making money.
