San Francisco News Blog

The November Coalition

Drug War protester at Huntington Beach, Calif.

Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office

D.A. Steve Cooley (left) and City Attorney Carmen Trutanich: They'll keep busting dispensaries no matter what the City Council says!

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Photo by Shay Sowden, Wikimedia Commons

L.A.'s dispensaries remain open, for now.

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Photo by LiveBloid, Wikimedia Commons

Watching you?

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Even when compared with fellow combat veterans -- not pencil pushers -- soldiers who reported taking others' lives had higher incidences of post-traumatic stress disorder, violent behavior, troubles with daily functioning, and myriad other psychological problems. And these problems have persisted for years.

"Killing, in a variety of ways, turns out to have a wide range of mental health and functioning impacts," said the study's lead author Dr. Shira Maugen, a staff psychologist at the San Francisco VA. The study was published in a recent edition of The Journal of Traumatic Stress. "We knew [killing] would be important, but we were surprised at the extent to which the effects of being in combat faded in comparison."

Here's the study's methodology:

Photo by Coaster 420, Wikimedia Commons

Coming to a dispensary near you

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A study published in this month's edition of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine finds that children from low-income communities who regularly attend PE classes have a lower body mass index and greater cardiovascular fitness than their more sedentary peers.

The analysis of 9,268 seventh- and ninth-grade students at 19 high schools in low-income communities found the following:

In an April cover story, we looked at the dilemma facing the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the state agency created through Proposition 71 to fund stem-cell research: Should the landmark agency direct the remainder of its $3 billion in research funds towards "adult" stem cells -- which are closer to clinical applications, albeit for less serious ailments -- or to embryonic stem cells, which offer hope to intractable degenerative diseases such as juvenile diabetes and multiple sclerosis?

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CIRM board member Jeff Sheehy told SF Weekly back in April that this was "an identity issue" for the agency, particularly since it was founded in response to Bush Administration restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research.

"If we are going to say that we're going to work with adult stem cells, we can be in the translational phase and the clinic now," said Sheehy, who is also communications director for UCSF's AIDS Research Institute. "While they're going to be of benefit to a great many people in California, these adult-stem-cell approaches are probably not going to have a big impact on these severe degenerative diseases that really motivated a great number of people to support Prop. 71, like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, spinal-cord injuries."

This morning, Kellogg's released a statement that they are discontinuing the immunity statements on all of their Rice Krispies cereal boxes because of the recent public attention on the swine flu. But never fear, they also write that their cereal will still be fortified with antioxidants. Most importantly though, it will still be 40 percent sugar by weight, which is the reason most people buy the cereal anyhow.

A spokeswoman for the company, Susan Norwitz, wrote in an e-mail that the company started their immunity marketing in May 2009 -- well before the swine flu became an issue. Norwitz said it's coincidental that the package made it to the shelves at the same time that H1N1 fears blew up.

Photo: Coaster420, Wikimedia Commons

Medical marijuana: Legal as long as you don't actually buy it anywhere?

​It's a classic case of disconnect between public policy and public opinion. As District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis continues with her medical marijuana dispensary crackdown in San Diego, a new poll indicates that a hefty majority of city residents favor leaving the pot shops open and regulating them.

Due to the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Gonzales v. Raich, the government has the discretion to enforce federal marijuana laws even in medical marijuana states. The Raich ruling also allows federal prosecutors to conveniently exclude evidence of medical use or state law compliance in federal trials, all but guaranteeing convictions of medical marijuana patients and providers.

Last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder formalized a departure from Bush Administration policy when he issued new guidelines to federal prosecutors discouraging them from prosecuting cases in which patients and providers are "in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws."

Unfortunately, the new DOJ guidelines neither direct U.S. Attorneys to abandon the more than two-dozen pending federal medical marijuana cases, nor allow defendants the ability to use medical evidence to exonerate themselves.

Everyone knows ex-boxer Tony Danza played an ex-boxer namd Tony on Taxi. Not everyone knows that lawyer William Berg's tipsy taxi promotion won't allow you to go from San Francisco to the East Bay

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We'll get you all the details, but we'll also do what most news providers do not -- and that is spell out, explicitly, that you cannot take a cab from San Francisco to the East Bay on Bill Berg's dime. So if you're hoping to drink like Peter O'Toole in the city and then glide home, gratis, in a cab -- you'll have to come up with some other ingenious plan.

"In San Francisco you can go from any bar or restaurant to your own residence within city limts," says Berg. "You cannot go to another party or bar. And, unfortunately, our budget doesn't allow you to travel outside of San Francisco."

Of course, interestingly, if San Franciscans want to booze it up in the East Bay and then take a cab home courtesy of Berg -- he says you can do that.

Photo by Rotbuche, Wikimedia Commons

Let my people grow.

​In a stunning bit of role reversal, law enforcement officials in dispensary-heavy Los Angeles County are gearing up for a massive mobilization against hundreds of pot shops even while the Obama administration backs away from the federal government's traditional role as marijuana enforcer in the states where medical pot is legal.

​Say it's lunchtime and you're at the local gas station trying to choose between the chili cheese dog withering away under the heat lamp or the pre-packaged chicken salad sandwich -- which is going to be healthier? Your instincts might say: Sterile-looking, triangle-shaped sandwich. But the Department of Justice says: If it's a REL's sandwich, go with the cheese dog.

The DOJ filed a federal suit yesterday in San Francisco District Court against Oakland-based REL's Food, Inc. -- which makes the pre-packaged sandwiches one might find at a gas station or convenience store --  claiming the company has repeatedly ignored federal warnings about health violations and sold "adulterated" food to customers. Department of Justice spokesman Charles Miller told SF Weekly that the sandwiches had been distributed to stores throughout California -- including San Francisco and other Bay Area cities. Ron Owens, the spokesman for the state Department of Public Health confirmed that the state enacted an "embargo" on REL's sandwiches nearly three weeks ago, so you shouldn't find them on any shelves near you.

Here's why the feds think that's a good thing: REL's hasn't exactly had a clean bill of health for a while now. In roughly the past three years, harmful bacteria has been discovered everywhere in the REL's production area according to the suit: from broom bristles to the in-feed belt of the packaging machinery to the production tables to the tuna scoops to the meat slicer. The lab that conducted the tests also found that bacteria enjoy the finished product -- the bugs have shown up in the roast beef, ham and cheese, tuna, turkey and cheese, and chicken salad sandwiches. In the court docs, the feds identify the company's cleaning methods -- specifically the use of a high-pressure water hose -- as being especially problematic because some of the bacteria colonize in moist environments. The company was inspected and sanctioned no fewer than 10 times since 2002.

policeone.com

We got their Zig Zags, too!

Fine. So they don't kill bacteria.

​When we first learned that the  U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was suing The North Face parent company, VF Outdoor Inc., for supposedly making false claims about their shoes preventing bacteria, it sounded a little strange.

The EPA seemed to be suggesting there might be something unsafe about the shoes, which it called "unregistered pesticides," but it turns out that everything about the shoe, and its bacteria-inhibiting insert, was registered with the EPA. The only problem was an overstatement in VF Outdoor Inc.'s marketing materials (which resulted in the EPA reclassifying the shoes as "unregistered pesticides").

The North Face was claiming that an AgION antigmicrobial silver agent in the shoe would inhibit the grown of disease-causing bacteria. Although it's unclear how this is an overstatement (AgION is registered with the EPA as a pesticide), it apparently is, and the EPA is apparently going after VF Outdoor for a cool million, even though it has gone soft on similiar, relatively insignificant violations in the past.

Anna McCarthy

Tom Ammiano (left) poses with NORML's founder, R. Keith Stroup

​Pot enthusiasts started off day two of NORML's 38th Annual Conference with a "Marijuana Mitzvah," which the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws' executive director, Allen St. Pierre, described as a pot blessing ("Mitzvah" translates, roughly, as "good deed" from Hebrew; St. Pierre also threw in a mitzvah shout-out to Bob Marley).

But most conference attendees didn't pull themselves out of bed before 9 a.m. to hear the pot mitzvah. They came to hear the pot luminary -- San Francisco Assemblyman, Tom Ammiano. Ammiano recently introduced the Marijuana Control, Regulation and Education Act" (AB 390), which would legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana in California. So it goes without saying that this crowd gave Ammiano a rousing standing ovation before he even took to the mic.

In his talk this morning, Ammiano emphasized his hope that with a sea change in the body politic and its stance on marijuana, both the public and the politicians will start to take the issue more seriously. He added that he believes the vehicle of legislation gives the issue the kind of gravitas it deserves. "This is a public policy issue, in my mind ... I'm looking for this perfect storm," he said, adding that the tone in legislature these days is much more "user-friendly" than it was before.

dea.gov

Leave that weed alone, officer!

Does this shoe fight germs or not?

​ ​If you're selling a shoe you say fights germs, you better be able to back it up. The North Face's parent company, VF Outdoor, Inc., learned that lesson the hard way recently when the Environmental Protection Agency accused it of selling and distributing unregistered pesticides (in the form of bacteria-fighting shoes). VF could face up to $1 million in federal fines.

"At issue were more than 70 styles of footwear that incorporated an AgION silver treated footbed," said an EPA press release, which also listed several public health claims that the company made online and on its packaging about the footwear's ability to inhibit the growth of disease-causing bacterial and fungal growth. 

The EPA collected its evidence against the North Face both online and at The North Face store on Post Street in San Francisco. When the federal agency notified The North Face of the violation, the company stopped claiming that their footwear protected against germs. All the claims were subsequently yanked from the company's Web site, and the product packaging was revised, according to the EPA.

Courtesy Donna Lambert

San Diego medical marijuana patient Donna Lambert was arrested in Operation Green Rx as part of the "crackdown."

​First, we heard from ambitious, headline-seeking San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis that there are "no such things" as legal medical marijuana dispensaries, despite state law. Now, even as a brutal crackdown on providers and patients is underway in San Diego County, officials from Los Angeles and other counties are being influenced by San Diego's anti-weed brigade to implement their hardline policies further north.

​Nearly two decades after Diane Sawyer busted the Food Lion grocery store chain for selling rotting meat to customers, the company still seems obsessed with saving money on refrigeration,  according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In 1992, ABC's Primetime Live reported that Food Lion workers soaked rotten fish in baking soda, re-wrapped old chicken in barbecue sauce, and sold rat-gnawed cheese alongside rotting meat. The company sued -- not for libel, but on the theory that Sawyer's producers committed fraud when they signed up as Food Lion employees and hid cameras in their wigs. Food Lion's legal strategy threatened to set back American press freedom to a new pre-Constitutional era, where reporters seeking to going undercover to expose, say, abuse of mentally-ill patients, could potentially be punished for fraud.

A $5.5 million punitive verdict was eventually thrown out in federal appeals court, but not before undercover investigative reporting became largely passe in the nervous-nellie U.S. news business.

Fast-forwarding to the present, and the chain seems to still be determined to make every penny count when it comes to refrigerating food. According to the publication Biotech Business Week, the EPA earlier this month awarded Food Lion its Distinguished Partner Award at the Food Marketing Institute's Sustainability Summit in San Francisco. Food Lion was lionized for "deploying advanced refrigeration technology at new stores," the Biotech Business Week reported.

​Unionized social workers staged a rally in front of San Francisco's Human Services Agency (HSA) building today, with labor organizers claiming that Mayor Gavin Newsom has reneged on his end of a budget deal hashed out earlier this year.

The organizers, from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the city's largest union, assert that $38 million given up to the city during contract negotiations with the mayor's office this spring and summer has not been rewarded, as promised, with new-found revenue to prevent layoffs in the ranks of the city's social workers.

Said SEIU Political Coordinator Robert Haaland, "Why would we ever in the future agree to any wage concessions when all we got was a broken promise?"

julianayrs.com

You can't argue with results.

​"There's no proof that medical marijuana works. It needs more study. There's only anecdotal evidence. It doesn't treat specific conditions. People just want to get high." Every cannabis advocate and medical marijuana patient has run into these arguments, threadbare as they are in 2009. Even from professionals who should know better -- such as many medical doctors -- the same tired arguments come up again and again.

Save the medical marijuana, fire teddy!

​ Sometimes the biggest signs of epochal change in society are those that are casually mentioned, five paragraphs down in a story. Such was the case with Sunday's four-alarm warehouse fire in Bayview, where fire crews remained yesterday monitoring for flare-ups.

Medmar Clinic

Medmar Clinic is under legal attack from the City of Fresno.

​You've gotta pity the poor, put-upon city officials of Fresno. After all, they've only had 13 years to suss out Proposition 215, this newfangled medical marijuana law that's being forced upon their fair city by more progressive Californians. And, heck, it's only been a little over half a decade since the legislature amplified and clarified the intent of the law with SB 420, opening the door for medical marijuana dispensaries statewide.

Estanislao Roch

​A Daly City octogenarian who often strolls to his daughter's house on Edinburgh Street in San Francisco's Excelsior District -- more than two miles away -- hasn't been seen since he took off for a walk on Friday morning.

This is unsettling as Estanislao Roch is not exactly anyone's definition of a hearty man. The 81-year-old suffers from Alzheimer's Disease and requires daily medication. Police are asking the public to call immediately if they see him -- and Roch is a man with a rather distinctive description.

He is listed at standing a mere 5-feet-tall but weighing 180 pounds. He has a noticeable scar across the bridge of his nose. And he carries a cane. 

Daly City's non-emergency line is (650) 991-8119 while the San Francisco Police Department can be reached at (415) 553-0123. 

Photo l Bonnie Powell / UC Berkeley Gideon Sofer

​ ​The investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Gideon Sofer's Blackberry from his hospital room at UCSF Medical Center at Mount Zion is ongoing. But in the meantime, patient relations has offered Sofer just $100 to replace the phone. The Blackberry, Sofer says, cost him $500.

"It's a really demoralizing incident," said Sofer, who believes that his nurse stole the phone on the evening of May 10 as he slept. According to a UCSF police search warrant, the authorities are zeroing in on a nurse who was working on the same floor on which Sofer stayed.