For more than three years, the city has been entangled in a painfully slow-moving legal dispute with California entrepreneur Romie Chaudhari and his would-be Miami medical marijuana dispensary, which seeks to open in downtown’s Park West neighborhood near the nightclubs Space and E11even.
After a federal district court judge sided with Chaudhari and ruled that the city had “fail[ed] to act” under the provisions of Florida law by not writing an ordinance that regulates or bans medical marijuana dispensaries, it was looking as if commissioners might finally grant the city’s first medical marijuana dispensary the certificate of use permit it needs to open.
The issue was on the commission’s agenda at its regularly scheduled meeting on Thursday — a scant six days before tokers around the world celebrate the annual marijuana holiday known as 4/20.
But there won’t be a 4/20 miracle after all, thanks to two senior-citizen commissioners who seem unironically stuck in the Reefer Madness era.
Take Joe Carollo, who implied at Thursday’s commission meeting that he defeated his high school football rivals on the gridiron because they were smoking doobies, whereas he had proudly said no to dope.
“Some of my friends — big boys, 6’4″, 250 [pounds] — would double-team me,” the 67-year-old Carollo reminisced from the dais. “And I’d be knocking these guys all over the place, and you wonder why? Well, it wasn’t because I was that strong.”
Manolo Reyes, who’s pushing 80, backed up his fellow fossil, railing at the ease of fraudulently obtaining medical marijuana and invoking the “children.”
“I have seen those certificates you can find on the internet. You can go and buy it,” said Reyes, ostensibly referring to phony medical marijuana cards. “They even make gummies that are accessible to children.”
Though the discussion veered off-topic, the commission’s task at hand was to determine whether to grant the city zoning director’s appeal to reverse the Planning and Zoning Appeals Board’s (PZAB’s) decision that Chaudhari should be allowed to open the city’s first medical marijuana dispensary. While the PZAB followed Florida state law — which allows medical marijuana dispensaries and requires municipalities to pass their own laws if they intend to ban or regulate them — City Attorney Victoria Mendez had previously cited marijuana’s listing as a Schedule I controlled substance under the federal Controlled Substances Act as justification for denying Chaudhari’s dispensary.
Even though there hasn’t been a single raid nor any federal interference reported at any of the 57 medical marijuana dispensaries in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, the zoning director sided with Mendez, appealed PZAB’s determination, and, ultimately left it up to the commission to finally decide if medical marijuana dispensaries will be allowed inside the city limits.
Though studies suggest that marijuana use among Americans aged 65 years and older has increased by 75 percent to treat arthritis, cancer, and chronic pain, Carollo is against allowing Chaudhari’s dispensary to open and made it clear he would side with the zoning office, referring to the PZAB appeal as the “Cheech & Chong ordinance.” (For the record, Cheech Marin is 75 and Tommy Chong will turn 84 in May.)
“I’m just concerned, as an individual, with people who are driving out there,” Carollo said. “You don’t know anymore what someone’s on when they get behind a wheel, when they’re driving erratic.”
Reyes concurred.
“My position has not changed on dispensaries: If it is treated as medicine, it has to go through the same procedure and dispensed through pharmacies with doctors and prescriptions,” he proclaimed….
Read More: Miami’s Baby Boomer Commissioners Are Against Medical Marijuana Dispensaries