Well, Did You Ever?
the420times | Jun 09, 2010 | Comments 0
FROM THE MAGAZINE
Well, have you ever?
Los Angeles officials hate to say whether they’ve tried cannabis
BY THEO DOUGLAS
We all know how the Los Angeles City Council feels about medical cannabis; it voted 9-3 back in January to approve an ordinance that will ultimately decimate the ranks of dispensaries around the city, and closely regulate the activities of those that remain. Los Angeles County District Attorney Stephen Cooley hasn’t exactly been hands-off where medical cannabis is concerned, either, despite focusing his wrath on dispensaries–the increasingly convenient scapegoat.
But what about when they were young (cue dissolving screen and mood music)? Did any of these 16 very important people–15 on the Council, and Cooley? Have any of them ever tried cannabis, whether medically or recreationally?
The answers depend, unfortunately, upon how much time you have, for there are few people so insulated from the prying eye of the press as our Los Angeles officials. So, with assistance from KPCC 89.3 FM’s Frank Stoltze–who conducted a virtually identical survey in late January, when the ordinance passed–here’s the tally. Results should still be current, assuming no one on Council has used cannabis during the three-and-a-half months since.
Of those on the Council who would even deign to discuss the topic, Stoltze found that Councilmen Tom LaBonge, Bill Rosendahl, Richard Alarcon, and Eric Garcetti were fairly forthcoming about their respective pasts.
“I was 15. It was after school. I was visiting a girl. And ya know, that’s what you did then,” LaBonge told Stoltze, admitting to a brief encounter with cannabis during his high school years, in 1968.
“Yeah, I have. Sure. So has practically everybody,” said Rosendahl, one of the three Council votes against the ordinance–though he wouldn’t say if he still smoked.
“Well, ya know I grew up during the hippie era and I’m not going to say I didn’t. I did,” said Alarcon. “And interestingly, I don’t think I ever purchased. If somebody was smoking at a party or something, we would have done it.
Garcetti was the most tightlipped of the three. “I have,” he said, when Stoltze asked if he’d tried cannabis. Does he still use it? “No, I do not,” he said.
Councilmen Paul Koretz, Herb Wesson, Jr., and Richard Alarcon declined to specifically state–but … you know.
“I won’t comment on what things were done in high school and college,” Koretz told Stoltze. “But I would say at a minimum it’s been many, many years.”
“Let me say this. I know what weed is. I went to college in 1969,” Wesson said. “And that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”
For the record, Councilmen Greig Smith, Dennis Zine and Bernard Parks–all former police officials–told Stoltze they hadn’t tried it. Councilwomen Janice Hahn and Jan Perry gave the same answer, back in January.
Perry, you’ll remember, was, with former Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard Parks, another of the three votes against the medical cannabis ordinance. Councilmen Tony Cardenas, and Jose Huizar wouldn’t answer the question–from KPCC-FM or from The 420 Times.
“My boss, his position is that on the state level, you can’t get around the fact that it’s a Schedule 1 federal narcotic,” said Parks’ Communications Director Dennis Gleason. “He thinks that at some point in time, that if this ballot issue passes in November, there’ll be a court case and it’ll probably go the Supreme Court.
“California’s always on the forefront with these things. What do they say? ‘As goes California, so goes the nation’?”
That is what they say–though if California does go that way, Steve Cooley probably won’t like it.
“Mr. Cooley does not engage in gotcha journalism. There will be no response,” was the e-mail reply from the D.A.’s Public Information Officer Sandi Gibbons. That changed ever so slightly, though, with a follow-up telephone call on the subject of “gotcha journalism”–a term that can expand to encompass nearly any unpleasant subject.
“Well that’s what Mr. Cooley calls it,” said Gibbons, who answers her own phone on the first ring. “He means that that’s a gotcha question. You’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t.”
It’s really hard to understand how Cooley would land himself in hot water for saying that he’s never tried cannabis (and we’re betting he hasn’t). But that’s what the man said, so there you have it.
Filed Under: Magazine Stories
