On March 24, advocates met at the Kern County Board of Supervisors meeting about the reopening of medical marijuana dispensaries.
Sheriff Donny Youngblood was at the meeting and made statements to the local media about the naming of the dispensaries. The name dispensary implies a business that makes a profit.
In order for the medicinal marijuana shops to be legal, both state and federal, it has to be nonprofit. According to Youngblood, the name cooperative or collective would be more appropriate.
In the Guidelines for the Security and Non-Diversion of Marijuana Grown for Medical Use, it states that, “No business may call itself a ‘cooperative’ unless it is properly organized and registered as such a corporation under the Corporations or Food and Agricultural Code. Cooperative corporations are ‘democratically controlled and are not organized to make a profit for themselves, as such, or for their members, as such, but primarily for their members as patrons.'”
Advocate Marco Florez is more concerned about the patients.
“I’m more for regulation where it (marijuana) becomes like alcohol or cigarettes, and it is just a common everyday thing,” Florez said. “I support Tom Ammiano’s proposal to the state to tax marijuana, and let consenting adults who are 21 and over buy marijuana for their own personal use at their house.”
Ammiano is a California state senator from San Francisco who is trying to pass a bill that will make it easier for adults 21 and over to obtain a medical marijuana card without a doctor’s written recommendation.
Bakersfield College student Jessica Flores thinks the reinstating of the dispensaries is a good idea.
“It’s a good idea,” Flores said. “They can help people who need it.”
BC student Vanessa Hernandez agrees with Flores to support those patients who need medical marijuana.
“There’s people who really do need it. I don’t see anything wrong with it,” Hernandez said.
Other BC students disagree.
“I think they should make it the doctor’s recommendation,” Carmen Salazar, 18, said. “Everyone who does it now will do it more.”