(Examiner.com) Last night it was announced on Facebook and through IndyBay that the “Beverly Hills Green Cross” medical marijuana collective will be giving out an eighth-ounce of “Beverly Hills Haze” to the first 500 medical marijuana patients to speak to the Los Angeles Planning and Land Use Management Committee at 10:00 AM on Thursday, 6 Aug 09.
Patrick Duff of “Royal Temple of Zion”, and “Discount Relief Collective” announced they would donate an additional 100 eighths of medical marijuana so that the first 200 medical marijuana patients to speak will receive a total of a 1/4 ounce of medicine.
“We’re taking a page out of 60′s activism” said Craig [X. Rubin] this afternoon, “we need to clog the room with speakers, make it take an hour or two for each hearing instead of the 8-10 hearings an hour they have been doing.”
The meeting will be at Los Angeles City Hall, 200 North Spring Street, Room 350.
There will be no video but the meeting may be heard live via the internet or via phone by dialing (213) 621-CITY, (310) 547-CITY, (310) 471-CITY or (818) 904-9450. You do not need to be a resident of Los Angeles or live in Los Angeles to listen via phone.
I do not at all like the idea of bribing people to take part in their representative democracy. If there is such need for more than the existing 700-800 dispensaries in the Los Angeles area, then the patients suffering this hardship should attend the meeting of their own free will. The fact that people need to be enticed with “$60 worth” of medicine suggests to me that this is really more about entrepreneurs being shut out of business opportunities than patients suffering from lack of access. That Rubin would exploit the poorest sickest patients who can’t afford cannabis at one of the hundreds of existing dispensaries in order that some may open up more $60/eighth dispensaries is even more distasteful.
How would anyone here feel if a national right-to-life organization offered to pay 500 women $60 each to testify at a council meeting to oppose the opening of a new Planned Parenthood clinic? Or let’s flip it: what if a national reproductive rights organization made the same offer to support new zoning laws forcing abortion protesters so far away from the Planned Parenthood clinic that they wouldn’t be seen or heard? What if the Democratic Party offered $60 to each person willing to attend a town hall to voice support for a public health care option, or if the Republicans did the same for those who would oppose it? Do we really want to have a democracy where bribes and money unfairly influence the political process?
Ha! I typed that with a straight face! Maybe Rubin is on to something. What do you think, Stashers?
Craig Rubin's offering a free eighth to the first 500 LA patients who'll testify at city council regarding "hardship exemptions" for new dispensaries:
- Fantastic idea! That's "playing hardball". (41%, 60 Votes)
- I'm on the fence. I'm glad to see people engaged in the process, but they should do it freely. (41%, 60 Votes)
- Terrible idea! It's democracy by bribery. (18%, 25 Votes)
Total Voters: 145
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[...] Rubin, as you may remember, is the man who was offering patients a free eighth ounce of marijuana if they would come testify at the LA PLUM hearings two weeks ago. “They seem to be [...]
OK, last word on this subject because frankly, it’s becoming tedious and distracting:
When I first covered the story of bribing people with $60 of free weed to show up at the LA PLUM hearing for dispensary hardship exemptions, I called it a “bribe” because the idea of paying people anything to get involved in their representative democracy sickens me. If the issue isn’t important enough to get people off their asses to engage their city council without giving them marijuana, that right there says a great deal about the issue.
When Patrick raised a fuss about it, I took a second look and thought, “maybe that’s too harsh”. That’s when I looked up the dictionary definition of “bribe” and found the second meaning, “to persuade or entice”, to be a little less derogatory. I thought maybe that would be enough to soothe hurt feelings.
But it wasn’t, as this continuing diatribe has demonstrated. So I thought about it some more and realized, no, I was right in the first place; it’s a “bribe” in the “corrupting the system” sense. If you’re paying people to engage the system, you’re corrupting it. Again (a point I can’t believe a few people can’t grasp), where does it end? How about we give people an ounce of weed to protest in front of the governor’s mansion? How about a pound of weed to shout down congressmen at a town hall meeting? How about $2,000 and ten pounds of weed to vote Green Party?
Is it good for patients to get free weed? Absolutely! I’m not condemning the people getting the weed. Is it generous to give patients free weed? Absolutely, but why the quid pro quo? Why not just give them the weed without requiring testimony at a city council meeting? This was nothing more than dispensary owners trying to leverage their inventory of weed to overwhelm a democratic institution, and it’s just as reprehensible as if Bill Gates paid people $10,000 each to disrupt a congressional hearing.
Finally, if you really really think that an informational piece of paper and a promotional button are “bribes” on par with giving away what still is a Schedule I controlled substance, I recommend remedial ethics courses at your local community college. The people who showed up at the meeting did so because they saw this post on Craigslist:
See, no offers whatsoever of free stuff for showing up! Those people showed up because, without any sort of enticement, they believed in engaging the democratic political system of their own free will because they felt the issue was important. Yes, they did get a free flier, a sticker, a button, and my business card for showing up, but they did not know they’d get that before they decided to show up. Nobody showed up from reading this post on the Stash, so obviously my “bribe”, as it were, was a pretty lame one.
That’s it, we’re done with this topic, it’s become (as Monty Python would say) far too silly. Comments are closed. Let’s get on with more important topics, like helping the patients in places that don’t have medical marijuana protection and 700+ dispensaries to choose from.
I will e-mail you for me to come on the show and then you’ll understand my motives.
So, even a free eighth of weed couldn’t get them to come out, huh? It seems to me this meeting was very important to dispensary owners, but dispensary customers didn’t care very much.
Look, Patrick, you’re welcome to come on the show; email me at stash at norml dot org and we’ll set it up.
But no, I won’t retract the word “bribe” as I obviously meant it in the sense of definition 2. That doesn’t mean patients have the minds of children; that portion of the definition is merely one example of definition 2. Another example might be if I “bribed” a homeless person with $60 to stand in line for me to get the first ticket to the Harry Potter premiere – I’m inducing or persuading him to do something he wasn’t normally going to do, but I’m in no way corrupting him personally by paying him to stay in line.
I would be, in a sense, corrupting the standard practice of queuing up for a ticket, setting up a situation where poor people have to camp out to see Harry Potter and rich people can just pay for line standers, just as you are, in a sense, corrupting the process of participatory democracy by paying (rewarding) people who participate on your behalf.
Please note that I am not at all offended by the idea of giving free medicine to patients. But can you not see how this pay-to-testify setup is a bit skeevy? If I’ve got an eighth and a poor cancer patient without $60 needs it for a chemo treatment the next day, there is no way I could turn to her and say, “OK, I’ll give you this medicine, but first you gotta do something for me…”
Do liquor stores have to jump through hoops like dispensaries there?
It was a sad day today for many reasons. First was the patient turnout, which was low to say the least. Then we had the straight denial of every application except one that was set for a later date. They didn’t consider facts, they only considered a very small criteria which is almost impossible to satisfy. We did get media attention though, so look for stories.
One love
Anything given or serving to persuade or induce.
I have no problem with this. 
the first def.,
I would have a problem with that kind of practice.
I don,t think it’s fair to use the word bribery. Yes it might be like bribing the kids to go to the dentist but I don’t think he is doing anything illegal.
- In principle,
I would be “dead set against” the cannabis-freebie,
considering it “democracy-by-bribery” to get people
to engage in the process, rather than
participating freely;
- whereas, in practice,
considering the “economy” and the price of
decent-quality medi-cann, this 7 gram
“incentive-to-attend and testify”
would be a very difficult thing to forgo…