By Raphael Hameed Santa Monica
Editor:
I have noticed a rise in medical marijauna clubs and the new laws that protect the marijuana patient from the police. New clubs have opened in Santa Monica and neighboring cities, but there is one thing I have noticed, and being a medical marijuana caregiver myself, I should know. The passage of Prop. 215, was passed on the backs of poor voters, who thought they would have access to the natural remedy. Those same voters are being cheated out of their right to affordable, natural, safe medicine that relieves a large range of physical and mental problems, without the side-effects. Poor people, on fixed incomes, can’t afford to pay unnecessary bribes to doctors, to get permission to obtain medicine from the local marijuana clubs that charge the same “black market” prices as the street dealers. It’s cheaper for the patient to take the problematic, pharmaceutical remedies and pray for the best. There may be safe access but there should be, also, affordable access for those on fixed or low incomes.
Raphael Hameed
Santa Monica
A shelter to count on
Editor:
Rebecca Isaacs is the executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA). Her proposal in a recent community brief asking 1,500 people to volunteer, i.e. work for free, to count the homeless in Los Angeles County borders on the absurd. Let’s look at the facts. Isaacs lives in a million dollar mansion in the exclusive north of Montana neighborhood. Her salary is in excess of $120,000, plus benefits. Before she asks people, including the homeless, to work for free she should first set an example by 1) developing a second unit “granny flat” on her lot to house a formerly homeless person or family leaving one of Santa Monica’s shelters; 2) she should organize her Wilshire neighbors and demand the city develop 500 units of multi-family low-income housing from Wilshire to San Vicente Boulevard, over the next four years; and 3) with a budget of almost 60 million dollars she should find the funds to hire the homeless to work with the teams of enumerators. The homeless know where their fellow travelers are sleeping under bridges, along freeways embankments, etc. If paid, some of them would have the income to pay for shelter, even if for a few nights.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 1, 2007. Read the original PDF.