By Charly SHELTON

The Crescenta Valley Town Council held its monthly meeting last week to discuss issues pertaining to the area. The CVTC said goodbye to Lt. Col. David Worley of Crescenta Valley High School’s JROTC program, who will be retiring at the end of the school year on June 1. Worley has worked with the Town Council for many years at its meetings, events and projects around town, bringing along JROTC students for flag duty and other volunteer opportunities. The Council honored Worley with a certificate and show of appreciation.

“For the last seven years that I’ve been on Council, I’ve had the pleasure to meet a very wonderful person,” said CVTC President Harry Leon. “He’s a dedicated citizen of this country, he served honorably and he continued to serve in our schools. With his dedication and his charisma, we are blessed to have him as a person in our community.”

Continuing with bestowing honors, the annual CVTC scholarship was awarded to nine students of CVHS who have shown leadership and academic excellence in school. The awardees were Joanne Dena Blood, Jacqueline (Jackie) Dall, Narek Galstyan, Paige Kenyon, Teny Khachadourian, Owen Spencer Lunt, Abby Sheklow, Jessy Shelton and Andrew Traber. These students were awarded scholarships to be used for tuition, books or any other resources to facilitate their college career. Leon thanked the donors to the scholarship fund making the awards possible: Burrtec Waste Services, Tires 4 Less, LK Jewelers, the Wiseman Family, Byblos Restaurant, Kids Arts and Apel Inc. Landscaping.

After the distribution of certificates and scholarships, speakers from the Los Angeles County Office of Cannabis Management (LACOCM) gave some background on the upcoming transition to legal marijuana use and wanted to get a feel for the local public opinion. Proposition 64, which passed in November’s election, legalized use of marijuana for recreational purposes and established precedents for the sale and personal cultivation of the plant. The proposition passed with 6.6 million votes in favor to 5.1 million votes against. The details of the bill, which runs over 60 pages, are loose and open to county-by-county implementation between now and Jan 1, 2018, the date the new regulations take effect. The Office of Cannabis Management is currently conducting outreach and will be holding a public hearing to gather input as it develops the ordinance to regulate the industry’s growth in the state.

“This is what we’re doing this month, coming out to town councils and community meetings to let people know that next month we’ll be having community listening sessions. [This will] give you guys the opportunity early on to ask questions, give feedback and to tell the people you know that we’re doing this so that we are well-represented and we hear all kinds of voices,” said Joseph Nicchitta from the LACOCM. “If you don’t provide feedback, someone will; what I mean by that is the industry is very well-funded and well-organized. They will give their feedback; their voice will be heard. So what we’re asking is that we give a balanced message to our committee.”

The possibility of marijuana coming to La Crescenta is unacceptable to many, yet the voters of the state have passed the law. As it stands now, the bill has legalized the sale and cultivation of the plant, but shops have not yet been licensed. The prospect that marijuana plants can be grown legally by local adults, even in small amounts, caused outcry at the meeting.

“I’ll speak on behalf of the children of our community,” said Paul Backes, La Crescenta resident. “In my long experience, marijuana is all bad. Access to it, any way, is bad. Experimentation on their [children’s] part at [sixth to eighth grade] is all bad. And it’s the responsibility of the adults of this community to limit it in every way possible. I think zero plants per family and zero in the County of Los Angeles would be safe. We need to do all we can to stop it in every way possible.”

In addition to giving background and educating the attendees on the different types of marijuana and THC products available, Nicchitta and colleague Max Thelander discussed other markets that have legalized marijuana, like Colorado. Its regulations and statistics are benchmarks to aim for in establishing the LA County code. This was also cited in the public comments, adding more opinion to the information provided.

La Crescenta resident Lidia Dinges was particularly strident in her objections of establishing local cannabis distributors citing that a person’s brain doesn’t mature until the age of 26 – long past the age when it will be legal to purchase marijuana. She also attacked “edibles,” products that marijuana can be mixed into.

“Colorado is … targeting kids to get them addicted and they go in and get more stronger drugs because cannabis just does not do the high that it used to do. The THC that is in the edibles is 90% of the THC. And kids, 5-year-olds, are going to emergency [rooms] because they’re having heart attacks.”

(Editor’s note: In an exhaustive search of both accredited studies and news reports, CV Weekly could not find any record of the 5-year-old marijuana heart attack incident, or any incident involving a 5-year-old and marijuana or THC at all. Dinges could not be reached for comment at press time.)

The public hearing is scheduled for June 6 at a to-be-announced location. CV Weekly will follow up with more details on the hearing as they become available. For more information on the LACOCM, visit cannabis.lacounty.gov.

  Charly Shelton