SeniorBuzz
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Should medical cannabis collectives be allowed two doors down from a preschool? That is a question the city of San Jose is struggling with.
For the full story click here.Their businesses stand no more than a hundred feet apart, at opposite ends of a small commercial strip. Neatly dressed, with her blond hair just so, Sue Campbell has run the Alphabet Soup Preschool for 29 years. At Purple People Medical, a medical marijuana dispensary two doors down from the school, Andrew Runner welcomes patients wearing baggy jeans and spectacular tats.
Recently, as Runner, 28, emerged from the back room of the cannabis co-op, his eyes were slightly bleary and bloodshot. As Campbell talked about the arrival of her new neighbor a month ago, her eyes brimmed with tears. Each is affable, except when talking about the other.
Together, they form a microcosm of an uneasy, often unruly merger of medicinal marijuana collectives with neighborhoods that don't want them.
"I think it's going to put me out of business, definitely," Campbell said, dabbing her eyes occasionally as 3-year-olds wove around her on tricycles. She was named the city's Teacher of the Year in 2006, but now she isn't sure she will be able to remain open.
She said she had already lost a couple of prospective pupils whose parents were scared off by the cannabis club. "On one hand, they honor me," she said of the city. "And on the other, the city is failing me. This can't be next to a preschool."
Campbell and Runner are both expected to attend a meeting at City Hall on Monday for so-called stakeholders in this push-me, pull-you municipal merengue. City Attorney Rick Doyle and staff from the city manager's office have not yet drafted an ordinance regulating marijuana collectives but will offer a rough outline of what issues the future ordinance will tackle.
"We're trying to craft something with clear rules that will allow these clubs to exist," Doyle said. "A lot of cities are just saying, 'We don't want 'em,' but that seems like the easy way out. Our council wants to allow them as long as they comply with state law, but that's been a tougher nut to crack than we thought."
Councilman Sam Liccardo, who voted with the majority to initiate the review, would prefer to see marijuana distributed through pharmacies but sounds resigned to regulation that would cap the number of collectives and restrict where they could be located. Within a few feet of a preschool almost certainly wouldn't be allowed in any ordinance he'd vote for.
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