(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…
The price has come down, just to many fools opened up and free commerce will shut them down or force them to contend.
The whole point is that people will sell
it on the black market so the price
can’t come down
My main mission has been to bring down the price at the same time giving the proper discounts to those in need. I have always fought for lower prices and higher quality.
I know that no where in the country can you get the quality you can in 50 percent of the collectives in Los Angeles than any where in the country. Some of the collectives overcharge, but free commerce has been WEEDing them out. So if you close more you give more of a monopoly for a few people, as NORML does with their legal racquet.
So let me get this straight, either the patients are being corrupted or they have the mentality of a child, is that what you are saying?
Please read the definition of bribe again and then retract your statement. I am not in this to corrupt patients but to shed light to the corruption of our city.
Why don’t you have me on your radio show and we can discuss this situation for the public to judge? I will come on any time you’d like to discuss this or any issue that is important to the cause.
So, tell me, how are we corrupting patients by using a bribe?
your not saying this is illegal bribery are you?
check out this 9min history of corporations
http://tr.im/vGQd
fair enough, I feel that same split, but haven’t political parties paid people to “get out the vote” before elections?
But the more I think about it, the dispensaries have interests different than the patients and more dispensaries haven’t brought down the price.
I’m wondering if there really is a good med. marijuana model that supports low price without across the board legalization.
Sorry you took offense. I’m just going by the secondary dictionary definition:
Now obviously I cannot mean that you intend to corrupt these patients, because they are not athletes, public officials, etc. Patients couldn’t really be corrupted in that sense, since it is likely that their testimony would be in their best interest. You are, however, giving something to persuade or induce people to do something they aren’t doing now. A reward for doing something you wouldn’t do otherwise is a bribe.
You do have something to gain, and that is getting the patients to pack the room so you can inform them of LA’s alleged scam. I don’t think paying people to engage in political action is a wise precedent – how would you feel if Partnership for a Drug Free America were paying anti-medical-marijuana people $60 each to pack the council hall to oppose any more hardship exemptions? Then you have to raise your bribe to $80, they re-raise to $100, next thing you know we’ve got people making a living showing up to testify for whatever anyone will pay them for.
Bribe doesn’t necessarily mean evil intent and I didn’t imply that. If it takes a bag of weed to get people to support your cause, either you haven’t done a good enough job explaining why your cause is important to them or they understand you perfectly and just don’t agree.
I enjoy honest debate, and I also enjoy a good conversation, but you are indicating that I am bribing patients and I take offense to that. I have nothing to gain from the situation tomorrow, I am doing this to reward patients who get off their butts and come to see the scam our city is running. This city is closing down collectives and then allowing others to open who pay them off. I have information proving this fact and it needs to be made in the public for many reasons including my safety.
Jah Bless
I’d like to believe that “More dispensaries, the more Cannabis available and maybe a drop in price do to competition. The American way.” but it has been thirteen years of medical marijuana in California and now hundreds of dispensaries and prices are still at or above black market. The other side of this coin would be “More dispensaries, more people making high profits off of prohibition and maybe a lack of support for overturning it.”
Thanks for responding, Patrick. But my concern is that there is a reason the people are apathetic and that is because they don’t seem to see the LA City Council’s actions as harming them personally. I’ve reported on many city council meetings and legislative hearings all over this country that are packed when people feel the need to go. Here in Oregon, patients packed a hearing room and an overflow room in Salem when lawmakers attempted to put onerous restrictions on our medical marijuana law. It does seem a bit like a “high-class problem” that people are apathetic about not having 20 more dispensaries in a county with over 700 when people in nine medical marijuana states would kill for just one and unprotected patients in 37 states would like to just not be arrested.
I understand the frustration. 22 million people will smoke weed this year, but we’re lucky if there are 22,000 active marijuana law reform supporters making serious efforts to change the law. But bribing them with an eighth to do something in their own best self interest, like, say, joining NORML, still seems wrong to me. I hate that our government is already a form of legalized bribery between large corporations and the politicians they donate campaign cash to; I don’t feel comfortable with our side emulating that standard.
Because if they weren’t getting the 1/8th, they wouldn’t show up – that was the whole reason they are giving it away free. Bribery doesn’t depend on the bribed’s interest. For example, suppose I paid a cop $60 to stake out your place to catch you with weed. Now, catching people with weed is something the cop was going to do anyway, but it would be a huge ethical violation for him to take my money to persecute you.
Or suppose there is a city council race between Yasmin from the Yellow Party and Pat from the Purple Party. City council elections are sparsely attended, let’s say 10% of the electorate turns out. And let’s say Yasmin and Pat are dead even in the polls. However, Yasmin is a single mom just scraping by and Pat is a millionaire. Pat decides she’s going to pay $60 to anyone who’ll turn out to vote for her. Who do you think wins the election.
This was a hard post for me to write. A part of me goes, “Hell yeah, that’ll show ‘em” because I so strongly support free medicine for patients, less government interference in marijuana, and guerrilla activism. But bribery is bribery, I can’t look past it just because the bribers and the bribed are forwarding an agenda I support.
Greetings and I understand some people’s concern at what we are doing. The fact is that people don’t show up anymore for protests or city council meetings unless it’s personal. It seems that people are a bit apathetic to what is really happening in our city.
At this point in time, in a bad economy, corruption runs deeper in government and in more directions. Tomorrow I am going to show evidence that the city is involved in a RICO scam involving city building inspectors.
I am not up for a hardship hearing as the other two collectives are, I am just just trying to make our local government realize how many patients that this city actually has.
Jah Bless
how is it bribery to give someone something, that they were going to buy anyway, to do something that is in their interest in the first place.
If they pulled people off the street and gave them a card and an 1/8 that would be bribery.
Republican lobbies did this to stop the Gore/Bush Vote in FL.
Now they are doing it at town meetings this congressional break.
It would be great if people would do it on their own but
peoples time is very expensive these days. I’m ok with it.
To me this looks like they are too content with their marijuana smoking in Cali. Here if we had any hearing any meeting anything I would drive hundreds of miles to tell my story.
Seems like they have their marijuana laws and they are happy with the way it is, where are all the people wanting to speek at the meeting? How many are driving hundrends of miles to do so? To give out free anything to get them to come, says a lot to me.
It may be for the benefit of the dispensaries, but who cares? More dispensaries, the more Cannabis available and maybe a drop in price do to competition. The American way.
Plus some times it is hard to get people involved.
I am 47 and I have been smoking weed since 16 and I have only been active in my own small way in the cause to legalize drugs (all of them) and cannabis right now, for 2 years. Ya just gotta get you Amotivated cannabis consumers off your ass and do something about weed legalization. Maybe some who speaks will enjoy it and do it again for free.
Disregard; I missed the Discount place’s input. But think of poor 201…
I think Patrick Duff better come through with another hundred eigths…or the second hundred won’t get their quarters.