A lesson on history and elections (and cannabis) for the PGUSD board.

History shows the P.G. Unified School District is wrong on cannabis dispensaries. 

Good afternoon.

The board of trustees of the Pacific Grove Unified School District needs to go back to high school and take some history classes.

My kids spent 13 years each in that district. They emerged pretty darn well equipped to face their futures. A lot of their success is because PGUSD is well managed, has good financial resources, a strong faculty and an engaged parent community. (Some of it is also likely because they share their mom’s genetic makeup.) I respect the work the board does, but today, in the midst of the biggest educational challenge they will ever face, the PGUSD board is using its precious time and energy trying to undo history.

Two weeks ago, Superintendent Ralph Porras and Safety Director Barbara Martinez spoke at a Pacific Grove City Council meeting, via Zoom, against a motion to allow a cannabis dispensary in town. Objections aside, City Council voted to allow the dispensary, on a 4-3 tally. 

People in support of the dispensary noted that 69 percent of the Pacific Grove voters in 2016 had cast their ballots in support of legalizing recreational marijuana use. 

PGUSD has also gone to the voters in the recent past. Over the past six years the district has asked residents of the city to approve a combined $48 million in school bonds. In 2014, 60 percent voted in support of the schools and in March of this year, 68 percent did the same. In other words, even more people in P.G. voted for recreational cannabis than for the school bonds.

Tonight, Sept. 15, the PGUSD board has called a special meeting at 6pm to consider just one topic: a resolution to ask the P.G. City Council to reverse its decision of two weeks ago, before City Council does a second reading tomorrow. Porras tells me he sees the dispensary as a danger to the students in the district. “I’m not an expert on dispensaries,” he says, “but a person could go in there and then turn around and become a distributor.” 

Maybe the superintendent and trustees haven’t been to Big Sur Canna+Botanicals in the Barnyard in Carmel, or Urbn Leaf on Broadway in Seaside. What they’d find is a boutique retail environment with a permanent security officer on site that looks more like a Tiffany’s jewelry store than a drug den. 

Maybe they are forgetting that people need to be 21 with a valid ID to enter dispensaries. Or that five high-volume liquor stores (Rite Aid, Lucky, P.G. Bottle Shop, Trader Joe’s and Safeway) are within a lunch break’s walk from their high school, and yet the genteel society of P.G. has not collapsed in on itself.

Pacific Grove is no longer a Methodist retreat center, but it does cling to its Puritan past. P.G. used to redline its housing deeds prohibiting Black people from owning property. P.G. used to dump its waste directly in Monterey Bay. Not very long ago gay marriage was illegal in Pacific Grove. 

Cannabis is legal in California. Get used to it. It’s no different than a liquor store. It is a retail option Pacific Grove voters have expressly endorsed. A dispensary would add to the character and vibrancy of America’s Last Hometown. The PGUSD board should ditch the morality hysteria and get back to the business of educating the students, lest history judge them harshly.

-Erik Cushman, publisher, erik@mcweekly.com 

P.S. To attend tonight’s PGUSD meeting at 6pm via Zoom, click here. The meeting ID is 830 3849 7585, passcode 066142.