"Paving the Way: Harborside Medical Marijuana Center, California"
Harborside is one of Oakland Californiaís
four licensed medical cannabis dispensaries.
Here, we provide medical cannabis to California citizens
who have a written recommendation from their doctor,
authorising them to possess cannabis.
We have over 30 000 members in our collective
and we see about 6 or 7 hundred patients per day.
Harborside Health Centre has the best selection of cannabis in the world.
We usually have about 100 different products on our menu every day.
That breaks down typically to about 50 different varieties of cannabis bud;
about 20 or 25 different types of concentrates or hashish;
and equal numbers ñ 20 to 25 different kinds of edible preparations.
In 1996, the voters of California
passed a measure called proposition 215
which legalised the cultivation, possession and sharing of cannabis
amongst people who had a written recommendation from their doctor to do so.
A cannabis recommendation can be written for any illness
as long as the cannabis helps the patient.
I came to cannabis because a doctor was brave enough to start that conversation
and utilise cannabis for the first time as medicine.
In late 2001, I was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus.
Most people who suffer from complications die in their mid-50s.
I was diagnosed in my early-20s.
The second diagnosis was fibromyalgia.
Between those two, I was on a regiment of
6 different steroid dosages a day.
I was on pain management pills.
I got to the point where I was dealing with transdermal morphine patches.
I was on probably 10 different psycho-antidepressants.
It was a major cocktail.
During that time period, I went through 2 major surgeries for cancer
and had several system tumours removed.
In 2007, I got cancer for the 3rd time.
Going through chemotherapy and doing that,
I could not imagine being able to be alive today had it not been for my cannabis.
So, I moved out to California early this year to be a part of that movement
and have the freedoms of having the medical cannabis patientsí protection here
that some states donít allow.
I do not take any other pharmaceutical anymore.
It is my balance.
I am much more effective because of it.
I am not constantly dealing internally with pain.
Now, am I really fighting my diseases? No.
But do I have a better quality of life? Absolutely.
Am I more productive? Absolutely.
Am I happy to be alive again? Absolutely.
Again, I get that because I have a balance of cannabis in my life
versus the alternatives . . . the alternatives I did not want to live with.
It just was not a world I wanted to live in anymore.
And this is one I do.
We do not really know exactly what specific disease patients have
because that is not usually listed on the written recommendation
that is presented to us.
Usually the recommendation from the doctor simply states that
the doctor has discussed the risks and benefits of cannabis
with the patient and has found that the patient could benefit from cannabis use.
The patient is then invited to become a member of our collective
and they sign a collective cultivation agreement.
They authorise all of the other patients in the collective
to grow cannabis on their behalf.
That brings us into compliance with the Attorney Generalís guidelines
for cannabis distribution and it creates a 100% closed loop distribution system
that completely insulates our patients from any contact the illicit market;
because all the medicine that we distribute here
only comes from people who have signed that cultivation agreement
and agreed to abide by all of our rules and regulations.
There are a lot of good reasons that people do not grow their own medicine.
California law allows patients to produce a little bit more than they need for themselves
and share that with these other patients who are unable to grow for themselves.
Usually you have a collective garden of several people
and typically they will take cannabis
and distribute it among the various different people that work in that garden.
When patients have more medicine than they need for their own personal uses,
they bring that medicine in to us.
We accept a maximum of 3 pounds on any one visit from a patient
to avoid being connected to large, illegal grow operations.
I have a very well-trained staff.
They smell the medicine.
They look at it under the microscope.
They make a basic determination about the quality of that medicine
and whether it is up to our standards.
We only accept 10 to 20% of the medicine presented to us
because most of it does not reach medical standards.
We then take a sample out of each batch of medicine that is presented to us,
and we send it to an independent third-party laboratory for analysis.
We do a two step process:
first, the laboratory screens for the presence of any pathogenic molds,
because there are some molds that grow in cannabis
that can be harmful to patients with compromised immune systems;
then, we also quantify the percentage of THC and other cannabinoids
in the plant so that patients know the strength of the cannabis
before they purchase it.
Once we know that the test result is good and that the cannabis is not dangerous
ñ there is nothing harmful in it ñ
we then package the medicine and distribute that to other patients
who are unable to grow their own medicine.
We purchase our cannabis for around $3 000 to $3 500 dollars a pound.
We then put a 40% mark-up on that,
so the average sale here that a patient buys is $90 worth of medicine.
Harborside Health Center pays a number of different fees and taxes:
there is a sales tax of ñ I believe it is 9.75% now
that all businesses pay.
Most of that goes to the state of California;
we pay $50 000 a year as a licensing fee as well;
we also pay a 1.8% tax in Oakland that goes directly to the city of Oakland.
This is a special tax
the dispensaries went to the city of Oakland and suggested they tax us.
We asked them to tax us
Because there is a budget crisis in Oakland
and we wanted to do something to help the city.
We also pay income tax on any profits that we make
to the Federal government and to the state of California.
That does not amount to very much at Harborside Health Center
because we are a non-profit institution.
We do not have much profit at the end of the year.
The figure is estimated at about 100 million dollars a year in California,
from the medical cannabis industry now in taxes to the state.
With the Obama administration coming into power,
there has been a change in the policy of the drug enforcement administration
and the federal agency.
Where previously they launched very frequent
raids of many, many different dispensaries,
they have said that the Federal government will respect state law
and will only target dispensaries who are out of compliance with state law.
President Obama is to be credited
for following through on the promises that he made on the campaign trail
and for respecting the wishes of the American voters.
I was proud to be an American on the day when I heard that news.
In a lot of states this is a luxury that dying people do not have
and, quite frankly, why not?
It needs to change and it starts with the conversation with people like us.
If you want to learn more about Harborside Health Center,
you can go to our website at harborsidehealthcenter.com.
It is quite a mouthful but be patient, enter it all and you will get there.
On we go letís keep on paving the way [for] more freedom
Transcribed by Arielle Reid Subtitled by Hunter Holliman