NICK SCHOU OF OC WEEKLY TO DISCUSS CONTROVERSIAL LB MEDPOT STORY ON GREATER LB RADIO WEDNESDAY
By Greater Long Beach
Award-winning reporter and author Nick Schou, whose current OC Weekly cover story about medpot dispensaries in Long Beach also serves as a disturbing case study of the institutional culture at City Hall, will be the featured guest Greater Long Beach Radio with Dave Wielenga on Wednesday, Feb. 8, at 7 p.m. on KBEACH.org.
Schou and Wielenga, publisher of GreaterLongBeach.com, were colleagues at OC Weekly from 1998 to 2003.
Schou, who lives in Long Beach, spent six months on the story, pursuing leads and interviews into offices of city officials, heavily armored cultivation spaces, storefront dispensaries raided by Long Beach Police without warrants—but strangely, with mid-level bureaucrat Erik Sund riding along.
His story, straightforwardly written to the rhythmic release of one hard fact after another, reveals a city council that acts on individual impulse, a City Attorney with his own agenda, a city staff that botched the lottery that awarded permits to investors when by buying the wrong sized ping-pong balls for the pneumatic machine and a hovering cadre of well-connected insiders hovering.
Schou will recount the twists and turns, dead ends and unexpected rewards of his investigation, including some of what he found that didn’t make the story. He will assess what he learned—about medical marijuana, but also about Long Beach government—and suggest what may be next.
8 Comments
What? No pic of Nick beaming, Claudia-like, towards the heavens ?
Schou’s report is like another typical day in seedy LB: creepy City Hall biz as usual.
What a mess. And all so very unnecessary…
Man, that’ll be a good show on the old radio. What’s John Morris doing that night?
In a semi-related development, I still miss Bouchee’s.
Why am I not surprised to learn Long Beach Parking Commission Vice Chairman Kurt Schneiter is John Morris’s partner in one of the collectives still in operation and that it has never been raided and shut down like all of the other collectives.
Nothing like Long Beach Commissioners garnering favoreable treatment for collectives judged illegal for everyone else.
Why are we futzing around with MedPot dispensaries?
I’d guess that 95% of Americans know someone within two degrees of separation who has benefited medically from marijuana, either as a pain management aid or as an appetite booster to keep needed weight on while undergoing chemo or radiation treatment.
I’ve assumed that the drug industry doesn’t want MJ as an approved drug because 1) it might knock several of their medications out of profitability, once MJ’s superiority for certain applications becomes scientifically demonstrable in a large population, and 2) MJ cannot be patented and controlled to monopolize a legal drug market.
Thanks to Nick (and Dave) for this story. It illustrates yet another pocket of profitability that the “War on Drugs” creates for insiders to exploit. It would be great if the FBI came up with prosecutable corruption.
In other words, make it obtainable at CVS or Walgreens.
Tried tuning in to KBEACH.org but kept getting an error message stating “Invalid station requested”.
Oh well.
Isn’t it interesting how City Council decided to allow the 18 medpot facilities recently opened and owned by the politically connected (Long Beach Commissioners, DLBA Boardmembers, etc) to continue to operate, but the other medpot facilities that have been in operation for years must shut down.
Isn’t it interesting how, prior to the most recent Council decision, the medpot facilities owned by the politically connected were NOT raided by Long Beach police while those owned by others were raided by police without warrants, had their possessions and money confiscated and were cited for violating ordinances deemed unlawful by the Court of Appeals.
Apparently Long Beach Police and City Prosecutor’s interpretation of state law and city ordinances extends to everyone EXCEPT the politically connected.