Think Wildomar and concepts such as a feisty spirit (it says so right on the city website) and anti-government bent (one of the reasons it took the community so long to incorporate) might come to mind.
Reefer madness probably isn't one of them.
Yet which southwest Riverside County city is on the verge of allowing retail outlets to sell medical marijuana to patients?
That would be wacky Wildomar at the forefront of distributing the wacky weed.
Or so go the fears of critics who envision the community turning into the cannabis capital of the area, hippies on the street corner doling out joints, political types toking at City Council meetings and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius near.
Lest you wonder what I've been smoking myself, I'm exaggerating the fears just a tad. OK, a country mile.
Exaggeration is what City Councilwoman Sheryl Ade worries about, which is why she chants this mantra about the issue: "Educate, educate, educate."
She says the people using medical marijuana are "everybody people," folks who need it to alleviate pain. It's got nothing to do with that 1960s stereotype of hippies, flower power, anti-war protests.
Ade favors nonprofit collectives in Wildomar, nondescript places where people can pick up their medical marijuana. Wildomar would be the county's second city -- Palm Springs was the first in 2009 -- to pass a law allowing such joints, I mean places.
As to the notion this would turn Wildomar into another sin capital such as Las Vegas as some residents expressed at a planning commission meeting last week, Ade doubts it.
"Nothing will change in Wildomar," she says.
As to her belief that people need to be more educated, talk to Paula Carter, who runs a collective from a home office in Lakeland Village. She'd rather do it in her hometown of Wildomar, but that's not allowed.
So how many local residents are part of Carter's collective that she distributes medical marijuana to? I thought she'd say about 25, maybe 50. Not even close. She has about 420, including a retired judge, a former FBI agent, some lawyers and a couple of doctors.
Or do as she suggests and Google weed maps. Click into the Temecula-Murrieta area and see there are 14 outlets listed, from the Ministry of Cannabis to Mr. Herbs Collective.
Carter's point is plenty of medical marijuana is being distributed in southwest Riverside County. She's a former firefighter and paramedic who started using medical marijuana when she had intestinal cancer a couple of years ago after finding she didn't care for the narcotics prescribed for the pain and nausea. She switched to medical marijuana and was more content.
Carter and her husband Michael have run the collective for about a year. To her, it's an industry that's here to stay, no matter what critics conjure up. Given the size of her clientele and the number of local collectives, it's hard to argue, wacky as it may sound to some.
NewsHawk: Ganjarden: 420 MAGAZINE
Source: The Press-Enterprise
Author: CARL LOVE
Copyright: 2010 Press-Enterprise Company
Reefer madness probably isn't one of them.
Yet which southwest Riverside County city is on the verge of allowing retail outlets to sell medical marijuana to patients?
That would be wacky Wildomar at the forefront of distributing the wacky weed.
Or so go the fears of critics who envision the community turning into the cannabis capital of the area, hippies on the street corner doling out joints, political types toking at City Council meetings and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius near.
Lest you wonder what I've been smoking myself, I'm exaggerating the fears just a tad. OK, a country mile.
Exaggeration is what City Councilwoman Sheryl Ade worries about, which is why she chants this mantra about the issue: "Educate, educate, educate."
She says the people using medical marijuana are "everybody people," folks who need it to alleviate pain. It's got nothing to do with that 1960s stereotype of hippies, flower power, anti-war protests.
Ade favors nonprofit collectives in Wildomar, nondescript places where people can pick up their medical marijuana. Wildomar would be the county's second city -- Palm Springs was the first in 2009 -- to pass a law allowing such joints, I mean places.
As to the notion this would turn Wildomar into another sin capital such as Las Vegas as some residents expressed at a planning commission meeting last week, Ade doubts it.
"Nothing will change in Wildomar," she says.
As to her belief that people need to be more educated, talk to Paula Carter, who runs a collective from a home office in Lakeland Village. She'd rather do it in her hometown of Wildomar, but that's not allowed.
So how many local residents are part of Carter's collective that she distributes medical marijuana to? I thought she'd say about 25, maybe 50. Not even close. She has about 420, including a retired judge, a former FBI agent, some lawyers and a couple of doctors.
Or do as she suggests and Google weed maps. Click into the Temecula-Murrieta area and see there are 14 outlets listed, from the Ministry of Cannabis to Mr. Herbs Collective.
Carter's point is plenty of medical marijuana is being distributed in southwest Riverside County. She's a former firefighter and paramedic who started using medical marijuana when she had intestinal cancer a couple of years ago after finding she didn't care for the narcotics prescribed for the pain and nausea. She switched to medical marijuana and was more content.
Carter and her husband Michael have run the collective for about a year. To her, it's an industry that's here to stay, no matter what critics conjure up. Given the size of her clientele and the number of local collectives, it's hard to argue, wacky as it may sound to some.
NewsHawk: Ganjarden: 420 MAGAZINE
Source: The Press-Enterprise
Author: CARL LOVE
Copyright: 2010 Press-Enterprise Company
