Several Malibu teenagers are leading a campaign against allowing a second medical marijuana dispensary to continue operating in the city.
By Olivia Damavandi / Staff Writer
Several Malibu High School students are urging the Planning Commission to deny permits that would allow continued operation of Green Angel Collective, one of two existing medical marijuana dispensaries within the City of Malibu.
“Medical marijuana dispensaries have caused an increase in drug use at Malibu High,” Gianna Fote, a MHS junior, said Sunday in an e-mail to The Malibu Times. “The proximity of the dispensaries to our community encourages teens to seek ways to obtain drugs from these sources.”
The commission had originally planned to discuss the item at its May 5 meeting, but recently decided to continue it to an undetermined date at Green Angel’s request.
Neither John Parsley, manager of Green Angel, nor city Associate Planner Ha Ly could confirm the reason for the postponement, but Ly said in a telephone interview Monday that the city received an e-mail from Green Angel stating it will be going forward with an application for a zone text amendment at an unspecified date.
In the meantime, a group of Malibu High School students who had planned to speak at the commission’s May 5 meeting are working to spread the word about why they think medical marijuana dispensaries pose negative impacts on community youths.
“Many parents are concerned with the drug problem in Malibu, and the problem has been the source of several letters to the editors of local papers by distraught parents,” Fote said. “If the problem is to be mitigated at all, this dispensary must not be allowed.”
“There are kids who are 18 and students at Malibu High School who are getting it [medical marijuana] and selling it at school,” Hap Henry, an MHS junior, said Friday in a telephone interview.
“There are always going to be drugs sold at school but I feel the dispensaries make it all the easier,” he continued. “If marijuana is more accessible and more acceptable by the community, it’s not going to be as big a deal for students to use it.”
Parsley said Monday in a telephone interview that the dispensary adheres to a strict protocol to validate the legality of each prescription it receives from its customers, which includes verifying identification cards, communicating with the prescribing doctors and keeping all pertinent patient information on file.
“We don’t allow any students from Malibu High,” Parsley said, adding that only individuals 18 years of age or older can legally enter the dispensary. “Most of our clientele is older, in their late twenties to fifties and sixties.
“We’re just focused on trying to help sick people as much as we can,” he said.
The application by Green Angel, submitted in October 2008 by Linda Parsley, requests a conditional use permit to allow its operation in an existing commercial building located at 21355 Pacific Coast Highway near the old Malibu courthouse. It also requests a variance to allow it to operate within a 1,000-foot radius of Las Flores Canyon Park.
Though current city law allows a maximum of three medical marijuana dispensaries, the council passed a distance ordinance a few months ago that prohibits any dispensaries from setting up shop within a 1,000-foot radius of parks, places of religious affiliation and schools, among other locations. When the city originally approved the operation of Green Angel approximately a year and a half ago, the distance ordinance did not exist.
While city staff recommends denying the permits, the Planning Commission may still grant them due to ambiguities in the distance ordinance. If calculated using Pacific Coast Highway, Green Angel’s distance from Las Flores Canyon Park exceeds 1,000 feet. However, if calculated over the mountain ridge and houses that lie between, the dispensary’s distance from the park is less than 1,000 feet.
“Right now that’s where the grey area is,” Parsley said Monday in a telephone interview. “The city told us we could be here but is now revising their old rules.”
The medical marijuana dispensary, PCH Collective, situated above Pacific Coast Greens, was issued a CUP in January after the city in summer of 2008 adopted an ordinance to allow medical marijuana dispensaries to operate in commercially zoned areas.
PCH Collective employee Travis Crisco said Tuesday in a telephone interview that the dispensary has never encountered any customers with fake identification cards or prescriptions.
Dustin Zahn, PCH Collective general manager, said the dispensary’s “really strict policies” prohibit such fraud from taking place. He said the stringent policies, similar to those of Green Angel, contribute to the fact that the majority of PCH Collective clientele are more than 40 years old.
Zahn also said that PCH Collective’s prices are higher than those of Green Angel and a side effect of that, he said, is that they reduce the possibility of resale because “it’s hard to resell something sold for a high price.”
“The bottom line is we are not selling to young clientele and we are very much opposed to any redistribution or any type of diversion,” Zahn said.
Though Parsley said he “doesn’t see that happening” in regards to the chances the Planning Commission would deny Green Angel a CUP and a variance, Hap Henry, a Malibu High School junior, thinks otherwise.
“First I’d like to see this CUP get denied by the Planning Commission,” Henry said. “After that, I would personally like to take further motions to maybe limit it to one dispensary and zero at some point. But certainly not the three they’re [the city is] allowed to have now.”
Along with Henry and Fote, MHS juniors Jesse Conrad and Keith La Masney said Monday in e-mails to The Malibu Times that no marijuana dispensaries should be allowed to operate within city limits because, Conrad said, “Irresponsible kids will become lazy and end up growing up to be failures, which will then lower the status of Malibu.”