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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, JANUARY 1, 2018
AP Photo/Elliot Spagat
Employee Joshua Wilson counts cash at the Golden
State Greens marijuana dispensary on Wednesday in
San Diego. A few dozen California shops have cleared
a final hurdle to sell marijuana for recreational use
starting today. Regulators worked through the week-
end to grant more licenses.
In California,
pot shops roll
out hoopla
By ELLIOT SPAGAT
Associated Press
SAN DIEGO — Live
music. Free T-shirts. A
“Fweedom”
celebration
with mystery prize boxes
worth up to $500, and a shot
at a behind-the-scenes tour.
Marijuana legalization
arrives today in Califor-
nia with lots of hoopla, but
only a handful of cities will
initially have retail outlets
ready to sell recreational
pot.
By Thursday afternoon,
California had issued only
42 retail licenses. Another
150 applications were pend-
ing and regulators planned
to work a second straight
weekend to review them.
Los Angeles and San
Francisco were late to
approve local regulations,
meaning no recreational pot
shops there will open their
doors today.
The lucky few outlets
with licenses — mainly in
San Diego, the San Fran-
cisco Bay Area, Palm
Springs area and Santa Cruz
— think they have an edge
being first out of the gate.
But excitement about
California joining the grow-
ing list of states and Wash-
ington, D.C., with legal rec-
reational weed is tempered
with the stresses of ensuring
shelves are stocked in the
face of uncertain demand.
The state issued its first
20 retail licenses two weeks
ago and an additional 22
trickled out since, some for
already established med-
ical marijuana businesses
that have thrived in Califor-
nia for two decades and will
continue.
Alex Traverso, a spokes-
man for the California
Bureau of Cannabis Con-
trol, said a dozen employees
were vetting applications to
“issue as many licenses as
we can” in the coming days.
The temporary permits
represent just a sliver of
the thousands of licenses
expected to eventually be
issued for retail recreational
sales. Local permits are a
prerequisite for the state
licenses, and many cities —
including Los Angeles, San
Francisco and Long Beach
— have yet to issue any local
rules, putting huge swaths of
the state on the sidelines for
opening day.
The Palm Springs area
had nine of the state’s first
retail licenses, including
seven in Cathedral City,
population 54,000.
San Diego had eight.
Santa Cruz and San Jose had
four each and others were
scattered around the San
Francisco Bay Area and the
state’s northern reaches.
An outlet known as
Caliva in San Jose is pro-
moting the “Fweedom” cel-
ebration today with the prize
boxes and exclusive tours of
its growing areas, along with
massages, acupuncture, waf-
fle desserts and music with
“mellow beats.”
A county supervisor will
attend a 7 a.m. ribbon-cut-
ting ceremony at KindPeo-
ples in Santa Cruz. Its chief
executive, Khalil Mout-
awakkil, said weed has long
been “a huge part” of the
culture of the oceanfront
college town.
Berkeley Patients Group,
which opened as a medi-
cal marijuana dispensary in
1999 and has received a per-
mit for recreational sales,
expects lines around the
block to mark opening day.
The mayor of the city that
includes the University of
California, Berkeley campus
is expected at a ribbon-cut-
ting ceremony at 6 a.m.
“You’ll see the people
who have been consum-
ers for decades and they
were for legalization back
in the ‘60s,” said Sean Luse,
chief operating officer. “But
you’re also going to see a
more mainstream group of
people who were waiting for
the green light.”
Harborside is planning
brass bands at its locations
in Oakland and San Jose,
with flags and T-shirts for
the first 100 people in line.
A few outlets with recre-
ational licenses are passing
on the hoopla.
For them, excitement at
being first out of the gate is
tempered with the stresses
of complying with new
regulations.
Golden State Greens,
with a modest storefront
amid car repair shops and
budget hotels in San Diego,
houses a bustling business
that has sold marijuana for
medical purposes since
2015. It will open its doors
at 7 a.m. today, like it does
every other day of the year.
After California voters
approved recreational weed
last year, the shop changed
its name from Point Loma
Patients Consumer Coopera-
tive, reflecting its ambitions
for a broader clientele.
“We’re planning for the
worst and hoping for the
best,” said marketing direc-
tor Alex Leon. “There are a
lot of unknown factors but
we’re prepared.”
Gary Cherlin, chief exec-
utive of Desert Organic
Solutions Collective in
North
Palm
Springs,
received holiday news of
his recreational sales permit
as he devised promotional
packages with hotels aimed
at tourists who come for
warm winters. He said being
among the first shops to sell
recreational pot means less
competition.
“I don’t know how many
more are coming but they
don’t have a lot of time left,”
he said.
Mount Shasta Patients
Collective, which opened
three years ago in the north-
ern part of the state as a med-
ical dispensary, has already
turned away people coming
for recreational pot.
Others with medical
marijuana cards have been
stocking up ahead of price
increases expected after rec-
reational weed is legal.
“We’ll have all hands
on deck,” general man-
ager Austin Freeman said
of opening day. “It could be
really hectic.”
Associated Press writers
Janie Har in San Francisco
and Amanda Lee Myers in
Los Angeles contributed to
this report.
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
A large homeless encampment is formed in the Santa Ana Civic Center in October in Santa Ana, Calif. The number of
homeless living in Orange County has climbed 8 percent over the last two years. The increase is driven by soaring
housing costs, though a drug addiction crisis and need for mental health services are also factors.
As West Coast fights homelessness,
kindness is sometimes contentious
By AMY TAXIN and
GEOFF MULVIHILL
Associated Press
ANAHEIM, Calif. —
Mohammed Aly does not see
why he shouldn’t try to ease
the lives of Orange County’s
homeless. But the authorities
— and many of his neighbors
— disagree.
Aly, a 28-year-old lawyer
and activist, has been arrested
three times as he campaigned
on behalf of street people.
Recently, he was denied per-
mission to install portable toi-
lets on a dried-up riverbed, site
of an encampment of roughly
400 homeless.
“It is a question of basic
empathy,” he said.
But his detractors are
engaged in a debate up and
down the West Coast as the
region struggles to cope with
a rising tide of homeless-
ness. They say Aly and other
well-meaning residents who
provide the homeless with
tents, toilets and hot meals
are enabling them to remain
unsheltered.
And they note, nuisances
like trash and unsanitary condi-
tions fester and aberrant behav-
ior continues.
In California, the San Diego
County community of El Cajon
passed a measure that curtails
feeding the homeless, citing
health concerns. Los Angeles
city officials have closed and
re-opened restrooms for those
on Skid Row amid similar
controversies.
The issue is hotly debated
in Orange County. In the sea-
side enclave of Dana Point,
neighbors fear a nightly meal
is drawing homeless to a state
beach where teens play beach
volleyball and families pic-
nic and surf. And on the river-
bed 30 miles north, a van fitted
with shower stalls pulls up to
help those living in the trash-
strewn encampment, which
neighbors worry is becoming
more entrenched in an area
where they once jogged and
biked.
“There’s no doubt that giv-
ing them stuff there prevents
them from a desire to move,”
said Shaun Dove, a 46-year-
old soon-to-be retired police-
man who lives less than a mile
away.
The number of homeless
living in Orange County has
climbed 8 percent over the last
two years. In the United States,
homelessness rose slightly in
the last year to nearly 554,000,
pushed up largely by increases
on the West Coast, federal data
shows. The increase is driven
by soaring housing costs, as
well as a drug crisis and need
for mental health services.
Advocates say the homeless
have become more visible as
police have cracked down on
rules barring camping, driving
people to spots like the river-
bed, which is county property.
Everybody knows the solu-
tion is more housing; there
aren’t enough beds available in
a county with a median home
price near $700,000.
In Dana Point, the nightly
meals began more than two
decades ago at local churches
Homeless people wait in line for a free meal in December in Dana Point, Calif. The number
of homeless living in Orange County has climbed 8 percent over the last two years. Advo-
cates say the homeless population has become more visible as police have cracked down
on rules barring camping, driving people from parks and bus benches to a few centralized
locations, such as the flood control channel along the Santa Ana River in Anaheim.
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Follow AP’s complete
coverage of the West
Coast homeless crisis
here: https://apnews.
com/tag/HomelessCrisis
Homeless tents are pitched on a sidewalk in the Skid
Row area of downtown Los Angeles in November as ta-
bles are set up on the street to serve dinner to homeless
people at the Los Angeles Mission’s Annual Thanksgiving
Dinner Celebration. Goodhearted neighbors heartbroken
over the rising number of homeless in their communities
are dishing out hot meals, providing mobile showers and
handing out sandwiches to those in need, hoping they
can make a difference.
Two police officers, Eric Meier, right, and Curtis Bynum
from the Anaheim Police Department’s homeless outreach
team walk through a homeless encampment set up out-
side Angel Stadium to hand out flyers about the commu-
nity outreach day on Dec. 19 in Anaheim, Calif. The event
was organized by nonprofit organizations and agencies to
offer services to homeless people in Orange County.
but were moved to the beach
parking lot after a late night
stabbing between two home-
less residents.
The homeless say as much
as they appreciate the hot
meals, the food isn’t keeping
them on the streets.
“It doesn’t help me tomor-
row. It doesn’t,” said a 55-year-
old man who refused to give
his name. “But it helps me
today.”
Volunteers say the homeless
are drawn to beaches because
of the open space and access to
water and restrooms and that
feeding people can build trust
and lead them to additional
services.
But Brian Brandt, a 55-year-
old lawyer, doesn’t let his six
children go down to the beach
alone after seeing volatile out-
bursts among the homeless and
frequent police calls.
“I don’t want to be seen as
a bad guy — ‘OK, look at this
heartless dude,’” he said. “I
don’t feel safe. I don’t feel like
my kids are safe.”
Toni
Nelson,
who
co-founded a neighborhood
group, is also critical of the
meals. She has joined with
housing advocates to try to
raise money to house the
homeless with ties to the com-
munity, figuring if about a third
of the city’s residents chip in
$68 they can cover much of the
need for a year.
So far, dozens have signed
up to give. But they still have a
long way to go.
Robert Marbut, a consultant
on homelessness, believes it’s
misguided to provide housing
or other services without heavy
incentives for recipients to be
in treatment programs for men-
tal health problems, addiction
or other issues.
“Anytime you give out
services without treatment,”
Marbut said, “that’s enabling,
period. ... You’ve got to serve
the food in a place where men-
tal health is being provided.”
People say they ended up at
the riverbed encampment for
different reasons ranging from
drug addiction to a lost job.
Many nearby residents
said their neighborhoods have
suffered since the camp has
grown. Hypodermic needles
have been found in the park
and shopping carts rattle on
otherwise quiet streets.
Anaheim officials said any
aid should be part of a broader
effort to help people find a way
out of the riverbed. “The goal
shouldn’t be to make it slightly
more comfortable there to live
that way but rather, how can
we get those folks to a better
place?” said city spokesman
Mike Lyster.
Orange County has shel-
ter beds but they largely fill up.
And many homeless said they
don’t like a shelter curfew or
rules barring pets and prefer
their privacy, even outdoors.
County authorities say they
want to clear the riverbed and
have provided those living
there with showers and case
management services to help
those who want it.