Marijuana Dispensary Workers Taken in by Powerful Labor Union UFCW

glad i saw this.... that book will definitely help with my research paper. Thanks!

We have recently begun to accept new members for 2011-2012 and walk-ins are always welcome. We have lowered our pricing and now offer a 10% discount for Veterans & Students (with valid ID) and HIV & Cancer patients.  (All our TOP SHELF 1/8’s are capped at $40).  Since opening our doors in 2009 our Denver dispensary has stood by our product and offered a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. http://www.tgtree.com/

Great news, a responsible business decision.  We need to stand and be a business and pay our taxes, assure our employees have good health care and other responsible benefits  like any small business  If you want to be considered legitimate business you must act like one... 1 step forward.  Is this an extension of the Oakland Dispensaries?  I saw a post on Craig's Lis employment section, paying $25.00 an hour for trimmers including health benefits. Hard work but a decent pay.

 "My coworkers and I have joined UFCW Local 770 because we want to protect and preserve good jobs and access to affordable healthcare that responsible medical cannabis dispensaries can provide," an employee at the Venice Beach Care Center says in the presser."

Venice Beach Care Center???  This is a store front that will sell a medical card to anybody - I was told I could use my HOTEL address because I was from out of town.  Cannabis most certainly has amazing healing properties and can be extremely useful in health care, but the current law is being abused.  There is no way that the majority of people with MMJ cards are that sick.  Just legalize it completely and stop the charade.

And on what does "Dr." Usher base her "non-patient profile?"  Stop being a crusader and get a real job!

There's a referendum underway to do away with prohibition. It has about a month until the deadline, will there be any help with that?

Dennis R = Not very good

The topic is not one that lends itself to easy discussion. Advocates on either side share equal passion, and equally, when passion turns to obsession, both sides tend to miss the significance of the matter. The politicking, the entrenchment of deficient paradigms at every level of the dispensary/collective industry, the failure to meet patient's right mandates and safeguard federal regulations is appalling. Remove the focus from the moral sphere; see the challenge for what it is: a national healthcare exigency that requires administration to that similarly used across the healthcare industry. Subsume dispensary handling under aegis of a total, harm-reduction umbrella and encourage the growth, promotion and interest in understanding how marijuana achieves its panoply of effects, both positive and negative. Invest a little now, or pay a heavier price later.

I work with the employees of local 770 and this is just another way for the union to hold on to what little control they have anymore.  These new employees need to know that they are only the holders of the penison plan and healt care policy.  The employer pays for this not the union and your dues go to pay there wages. They also that your money to hire lobbiest to pass bills in there favor that you may not want.  I was a union employee and when I ask for there help they did not come to assist They told me to ask for a promotion.  They are a joke, its not whats in the best interest of the employee its whats in the best interest of this uion.  These new uion employees better be educated on the truth which am sure the union has not.  Because I have personnely delt with there half truth going thru the strike our contract was worse by the end then what was presented to us in the beginning.  And if you don't want a strike and they do it anyway your vote really does not matter, they will take a vote and it always comes up in there favor.  Beware of what you think your getting.  Also lets remember anyone can get one of these medical cards whats happening with these doctors who just hand them out for a 50.00 vist. And do we want such easy access.  And Why are they the union saying this is for the medical community. It's more about having employee not educated on the way the union really works.  And these employee no longer have a voice because the unon is there voice which I bet that they don't even get it.   If employers pay competively and ofter medical the average person would not need any uion.  It's not the 1920 anymore.

By allowing the thieving local 770 union to champion them, the Medical Marijuana Movement has gone from the frying pan right into the fire.  This move is similar to going to the police for help.  2 faces of the same monster. 

If I am a member of this Union (I'm a medical cannabis dispensary employee), what protection does it currently offer my job in the face of a threatening letter from the DOJ? I can't see how this would have any effect on a threat to our landlord and his property....

Am I missing something?

Exactly how would an investigation of the operation of a collective reveal why the patients have their recommendation? Those records are confidential. I've never seen a California rec that stated the reason that it was issued, and I've never heard of a collective that asked except for WAMM. WAMM is the one that only takes the sickest of the sick. The one with 5 times more dead than live members.

Remember, when you hear a California authority state that the dispensaries they've investigated are"serving hundreds of thousands of "patients" who fit a rather non-patient profile" that it's a bald faced lie because those authorities simply are not privy to that information. Do you really like it when elected public servants engage in bald faced lies to the people they're supposed to serve? Oh, and shame on the L.A. Weekly for just repeating Ms. Usher's bald faced lie without bothering to see if it has any basis. But then again why would anyone expect any kind of journalistic integrity from a throwaway that's the main go to place in L.A. for sexual perverts and deviants that want to hire sex workers?

It is nice to see that the mmj news is being written by a grown up and not by that puerile cretin Romero

Carmen Trutanich needs to read the book, "Marijuana Gateway to Health: How Cannabis Protects Us from Cancer and Alzheimer's Disease" so that he can learn what science says--that using marijuana is health-positive behavior. He's starting to look like the terrible anti-desegregation forces of the 1960s, informed by ignorance and committed to evil.

slap the crap out of the politicians who deny science, decency and compassion because they have a sadistic need to ruin lives and put humans into cages

That's good news. Unions are powerful beasts, I like where this is going.

An appeal to all Prohibitionists:

Most of us know that individuals who use illegal drugs are going to get high - no matter what, so why do you not prefer they acquire them in stores that check IDs and pay taxes? Even if we could afford to put Narcs on every single corner, at least half of them would soon become dealers themselves. Gifting the market in narcotics to ruthless criminals, foreign terrorists and corrupt law enforcement officials is seriously compromising our future.  

Why do you wish to continue with a policy that has proven itself to be a poison in the veins of our once so proud & free nation? Even if you cannot bear the thought of people using drugs, there is absolutely nothing you, or any government, can do to stop them. We have spent 40 years and trillions of dollars on this dangerous farce; Prohibition will not suddenly and miraculously start showing different results. Do you actually believe you may personally have something to lose If we were to begin basing our drug policy on science & logic instead of ignorance, hate and lies?  

Maybe you're a police officer, a prison guard or a local/national politician. Possibly you're scared of losing employment, overtime-pay, the many kick-backs and those regular fat bribes. But what good will any of that do you once our society has followed Mexico over the dystopian abyss of dismembered bodies, vats of acid and marauding thugs carrying gold-plated AK-47s with leopard-skinned gunstocks? 

Kindly allow us to forgo the next level of your sycophantic prohibition-engendered mayhem. 

Prohibition Prevents Regulation : Legalize, Regulate and Tax!

The "sketchy unknown source" of their marijuana is coming from where it's supposed to come from...the members of the collective themselves. The people who write these articles and "investigate" are woefully inadequate and inaccurate. Calgon take me away!