the continuing disappearance of medical emergency dispensaries and what that means for different parts of the industries strait is ahead from equal time. >> you're watching equal time exploring new issues each week. >> hello from the campus of san jose state university and welcome to this edition of equal time. i'm your host journalism school director bob rucker. according to federal law in the united states emergency of --

marijuana of any kind is illegal. 15 years after it was made legal in california cities and counties all across the state are trying to regulate or ban the clinic completely. we report on how this effects people on what is now a full blown industry. >> at the university of oakland, students take classes on subjects not typically found in a -- csu. self-employed handy man is here for his own education. >> this is my second class here. i came here last month for the beginning class. i'm back this month for the advanced class. >> students attend seminars and even learned firsthand how to grow. if students don't have a medical marijuana card they work with rose instead.

some students are taking these classes to consider a new career. he used to arrest people for using the substance he's now studying. they have taught 15,000 students combined. however, people wanting a future in handling pot may find their profession is shrinking. medical marijuana clinics have been disappearing all over california and the same can be said for the job market. >> jab market is looking rather bleak due to the resent federal interference. >> sky jones is the director. her hope is for schools like this to help. >> the university has brought

unbelievable opportunities, not just for me specifically but more importantly for the patients and the individuals who are trying to learn how to involve themselves in the canibus movement. >> the activities are trying to help with the growth and distribution of medusal -- marijuana. >> we're try to go set up a system, a regulatory system to allow clubs to operate in san jose and provide the marijuana needs of people who need it. that's what we're trying to do. i don't favor the ban because that would be the alternative. >> not only were clinics required to grow the product on site but were limited. they would have been reduced from 140 to 10. according to the ordnance the

clinics would have to apply for a permit. it would have become first come first serve. >> i think the city council has to please the side that really doesn't want canibus to be this approachable and successable and they have to please that side as well as us. >> bo says high standards has thousands of patients in its data base and most of the product has grown off site. they say it might be difficult to meet the demand if they couldn't use separate facilities for corporation. >> i don't think they know the demand and supply yet especially when the product does come. the medicine does come from different areas and different people. if we have to grow our medicine on site, the demand isn't going to be met especially when the clubs aren't limited down the

ten. >> if they were to get the permit to stay open, too much attention would have been drawn to themselves. a more personal concern, however, is keeping a job. jeff had been working at high standards for five months. >> i'd been standing back in line. i have kids and a family. this is my family also and i don't want to lose them. >> by now, the san jose marijuana industry would have been turned upside down if they wouldn't have turned in 50,000 signatures. however, the canibus club got good news. >> the city council did a u- turn and descended the entire ordnance. counsel members concluded the difference between federal law and state laws prevents them from a new law. for now they have breathing

room. for now, canibus jobs in san jose are safe. >> when we come back we'll show you the argument for government officials.

welcome back. now that medical marijuana is legal in california some government officials are trying to put a clamp on the industry they say is out of control. once again, tim. >> medical marijuana is on on going issue in california. san jose is starting to take action. they're finding a balance between state and federal law. >> one of the difficulties is trying to figure out what the rules are when the state says one thing and the federal government says another. >> under federal law marijuana is illegal but california passed a law for medical physicians to cultivate marijuana. by august of last year, san jose housed more than 140 of

these dispensers. however, there was a problem. >> they're all illegal. >> in the eyes of the city, the dispensers have always been illegal. the only reason clinics still operate is because of the city's lack of police power. they passed an ordnance to allow ten clinics to operate under strict regulations. >> city voters submitted nearly 50,000 signatures to try to put the idea on the ballot. >> so we'll start with ten. if more than ten seems appropriate we'll deal with that later. >> the future of marijuana in san jose was in limbo until

this valentines day. the counsel approved the ordnance. the city council has debate it had issue for nearly two years. as of right now the discussions have come full circle ending where they began, back to formula. >> the main reason is finding the challenge between federal and state law. counsel members says under federal law not even pharmacies can deal the drug. >> pharmacies are prohibited from distributing any drug prohibited under this controlled substances act and this is what they call schedule one. pot can be used for medical purposes but of course, how to better define what cities can do within the law? >> the attorney general is appropriate in asking for greater guidance and there, i don't know how long that will be. >> until then, the city is targeting clubs that have been

accuse accused of not paying their full taxes or causing a nuisance. as the laws are written now, there can be no ordnances across the state. >> it's impossible to have an ordnance that's workable from the marijuana collections point of view. it can't be that. >> we've been beating our heads against this wall for many months. i'm guessing we're not along. >> without the february vote, the ordnance would have gone on the ballot in june. counsel member donald gives credit to the voters for making the counsel think twice. >> these folks showed after that decision the voters can speak and i think going forward we might want to take that to heart and do a little bit better and work a little bit harder and try to come to an agreement. >> despite the legal confusion, san jose still aims to be the only city to regulate the clubs

instead of banning them. that was the goal all along. every story has several sides. we'll hear the other points when we come back and will sit down with a panel of experts.

welcome back to this edition of equal time. our focus is medical marijuana. >> i'm tim and i'm a counsel member at the city of san jose. >> hi, i'm dale. i'm the executive chancellor for the university. >> my name the tim and i'm the producer, reporter of the story that just aired. >> very good and certainly this is a discussion we want to make clear is a focus on the medical marijuana side. you two have different points of view. dale, your basic thoughts about medical marijuana and regulation. >> one thing we can agree with and i agree with sam here on is we can have safer communities if we control canibus. i would go further and say we need to control tax and regular

canibus so we can shift our priorities from putting people in prison and putting them in school. take the dollars away from the violent criminal cartels and put them in tax dollars that will help the schools and law enforcement officers stay on the street. >> can we do that? >> i think we need to regulate marijuana in an effective way. in the reality of criminal prosecution since an effort was pushed two years ago we would not be putting people in prison or jail and in most da offices, marijuana is not a priority in terms of prosecution. it becomes more of a priority in rural areas. the argument about how we're putting people in paren may be

be -- prison. marijuana isn't putting people in prison. at the most it's putting people in jail but it's not what's driving the real problem of criminal justice. >> we talked earlier, the issue of regulation means city government or state government or something. how we afford to do that? >> it's challenging for cities right now because you know cities are suffering enormously throughout the country. here in san jose we have 200 fewer police officers than we had a year ago. it's a real challenge for us to figure out how we can sensibly regulate any kind of operation particularly one involving drugs which we don't do. we leave that to the fda and for good reasons. they have the expertise, resources and understanding and we don'tment -- don't. >> the federal government is opposed to any marijuana use and they're not going to

exactly jump in the middle of this and help you. >> it would be nice if we had a moment and could agree what the law should be but we don't. it can't be used for any medical purposes, state obviously, the people of the state have said differently and each city and county is grappling with that. >> there are people watching who use medical marijuana. even in the medical community it's torn between the issue being valid and one not appropriate. how does that make you feel knowing that you have the medical community divided? >> the medusal association came out in favor of legalization and regulation of all marijuana not just for medical purposes because they recognize the most dangerous part of using marijuana is getting caught with it. i would like the address one of

your earlier points about the criminalization. you're correct in the sense we're not sending people straight to prison. if you look at arrest records and this comes from our criminal justice reports. every crime is down on a arrest. all violent crimes, crimes against others, property crimes, all others are down. marijuana possession arrest are up 127% over the last decade. that's where our priorities are going. if we stop making cops chase pot smokers and have them chase violent criminals when the amount of marijuana arrest exceeds the crimes in california, i have to ask where our money is going. it's not about the tax moneys coming in, it's about where our priorities are when spending out. >> the police department is choosing to arrest people were

simple possession and they're not going to jail or prison. i think it's important not top overstate the nature of that problem. they're not being devoted to arresting people for possession of marijuana. if there's marijuana involved in the charge it's usually for large scale volume. >> it used to be but at this point marijuana possession now exceeds all of the major traffic and crimes from marijuana out there. it's not just we're criminalizing people and putting them in prison. it's not entirely true. who we arrest tends to be young people. if you look at them, they tend to be under 25. study after study has shown the best way to keep kid off drugs is education and job. that one arrest, sure they don't have to go to prison but they have to put it down on

records when asked about it. they have problem after problem getting a job and school. if you get busted with a joint you can't get federal funding for school but you can go to jail. our policy right now is going to jail and not school. it's the first time they miss their probation hearing, pay a fine, the first time their parents find out and say you're on your on and they just lost their job because they spent the night in jail. it starts a cycle that criminalizes our youth. i'm asking to educate instead of criminalizing. >> are we looking at the holistic? there are the bad players. >> absolutely. tim, you might want to talk about this. there are the bad players taking the revenues for bad reasons. we know government can't do all the regulation and control and

monitoring. they're taking advantage from people. >> we would hope our government can help us regulate that. it's difficult to identify if good guys from the bad guys and this is where i feel for your position. when you have the feeling of a free fall that's happening right now and you can't identify who the good guys or bad guys are, we have to have a set of points to say what are our values as a city. we have to make sure we don't create this wal-mart situation where everybody's going to one location to find the medical canibus and it happens to be the worst neighborhood in town. it should be near hospitals because this is in theory medicine for sick people. we have a very strong thriving market with marijuana and in fact, the government expects et 40-60% of the violent mexican cartels profits come from selling marijuana here in the u. s. i'm just suggesting that we strike the largest blow against these criminal cartels

than any law enforcement could by taking away their profits and focusing on the violent crimes and other drug crimes that really are damaging or folks. it's a malter of -- matter of putting them in a position of helping themselves. >> i think that's an argument that's well directed to the dea department of justice but not an argument that has relevance to what cities are doing. the reality is the entity that really ultimately determines drug regulation is at the federal level and whatever profits are created because black markets exist. >> as long as you're an organized crime person or you want to organize a crime effort to make money off marijuana, you're trying to do the right thing with medical marijuana and there's an opportunity here

and there's a place where they can thrive. >> let me ask you though. you don't see budweiser taking out things on street corner, they advertise. it's about regulation and taking it out of the violent cartels bringing it into the light. the drug dealer out behind the convenient store doesn't i.d. your children and doesn't care what else your children are trying and it pushing our kids into this hard drug market instead of educating them. the true danger is using too much too young. there are things just like alcohol and prescription medication that have to be taken appropriately with respect to the dangers. a drug in and of itself is not bad, it's how you use it. we went from 60% to 20% smokers here in america and it wasn't

through cracking skulls, it was through education and we can educate our kids not to smoke pot just like we do not to smoke cigarettes. >> is it part of your responsibility to look at how people think about marijuana and how they use marijuana? >> absolutely. >> what you said sounds good but people out there watching this are saying wait a minute, there's still recreational use. let me bring you into here. if young people don't understand the medical part of it and don't have the health issues that require the use or need of it, then it seems also to be recreational and they use the avenues you provide to get what you want. >> i think it's a lack of experience than it was all these drugs really. i think the reason why all these kid are doing all these things are the same reasons you see 15-17 year olds drinking. it's the experience more than anything. they don't think about the

repercussions. >> they do it illegally but they find a way to get the product, okay. i don't want to make it sound like young people are not responsible because i think most are. a good number are not and they're the ones we're concerned about. if the government cannot regulate it for simply economic reasons, you have to educate yourself. make sure young people stop using marijuana illegally. >> telling them stop doesn't work. if you look at canibus use across the united states and look at the criminalization, they're actually not related. the places that allow for medical canibus use have seen a reduction in their youth use. it's now medicine for mom and dad and it's not as fun and cool anymore because we're discussing it as medicine. you watch things like prescription drugs take off. you brought up an important point about alcohol. having a beer and getting

behind the wheel, all of that is scary for parents. when we look at canibus as an option, it's safe. no one has died from a death and traffic fatalities are so low that the numbers are not even mentioned in the national traffic safety bureau report. drunk driving is just as much of an issue as drunks driving. our officer are dealing with that right now. >> before we draw a conclusion about drug use going up or down with presence of canibus distribution clinics. data is hard to get in these

areas. when you're dealing with the drugs, it's difficult to get reliable data. it's hard for us to know what exactly is happening. i think it's important for us to recognize when you're talking about safety of marijuana as a drug, i'm not going to argue that marijuana is safer than alcohol. i think we can all agree with that. >> truth of the matter is they figure out ways to spike different chemicals in the drug. as a result we don't know what's in there and what the impacts are. we know there are some adverse health effects for some people and it may be a small percentage of the population

that have an allergy and some kind of reaction for the drug but we don't know. now the burden is on cities to figure this out as if we know anything about regulating drugs. >> there are people who have just heard both sides of this and said wait a minute, there are parents that don't agree with any of this and don't want to see the government get involved. what about their needs and what they want? >> the reality is most of the cities that i'm aware of that said we don't want to deal with it at all say it's prohibited within the city limits. san jose is the only city in the county that will accommodate this because people believe there's value and certainly respecting the will of the voters at the state level and reck needing -- recognizing there's medical need here. the larger cities are doing it that we think might have the

resources to figure it out and most of the small cities are saying we don't want to get involved in this. we have a lot of parents saying there's no role for us here and we should be prohibiting just like the federal government done. >> sounds like the issues are not going away. >> absolutely right. nobody's happy in the end. the regulations aren't progressive enough. >> final thoughts then we have to continue the dialogue. we have to continue looking at the issue but we also have to be very realistic. there's a demand, there's a public need, there's also a public need for education. sound like a challenge we're all going to f to -- to have to come back and talk again. we thank you for joining us. we hope you'll come back for

another edition of equal time.