Medical Marijuana Bills Killed by Odd Bedfellows — Labor and Business Groups
By Chris Roberts
Public safety and jobs. To a California politician, they are the bread and butter — if bread and butter means getting elected, that is. There are fewer worse labels for a politician than “job-killer” or the pejorative “soft on crime.”
You’d think, then, that a public safety bill (AB 1017) introduced by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), at the urging of Northern California district attorneys, would sail right through the Legislature. Or what about Sen. Mark Leno’s (D-San Francisco) bill guaranteeing employment protection rights? (SB 129) seemingly be popular in Sacramento.
Wrong.
Leave it to medical cannabis to break the mold and create odd bedfellows: The California Chamber of Commerce and organized labor, whose combined opposition felled Leno’s bill this legislative session. As for Ammiano’s? It depends on how you define “soft on crime.”
