Medical marijuana just might come to Elsinore

It was fascinating to attend the town hall meeting last Monday put on by We the People of Elsinore, a group trying to get the city council, which is inclined to ban medical marijuana facilities, to change its mind or put the issue on the ballot and let the people decide. All the panelists, including my old friends Judge Jim Gray and Ed Rosenthal, but also including a Dr. Fichter and the lady in charge of the medmar ID card program for Riverside County, were quite good. A lot of information was dispensed, a lot of questions were asked and answered, and I got to meet Wayne Williams, a local businessman who put the program together. I hadn't seen Ed Rosenthal for several years and we made plans to get togethernext time he's in Southern California.

Of course it's possible that the issue will become moot if California approves the tax-and-regulate-on-the-alcohol model initiative that officially now will be on the ballot in November. But it is encouraging to see medical marijuana advocates (much of the audience of 150, which filled the cultural center to overflowing seemed to be patients, but not all) and other citizens getting together to take action in the light of recalcitrance from City Hall. Of course none of the citi council members showed up.

Freelance fireworks -- Yes!

Once again this Fourth of July I am inordinately proud of the little town of Lake Elsinore, where Jen and I have lived for the last 25 years. From out back yard on the Fourth, we can see not only the fireworks display from the stadium (though no show this year, but the fireworks from Canyon Lake and Perris. What is most thrilling, however -- perhaps it doesn't take much to impress me -- are the fireworks from freelancers at about a dozen points around the edge of the lake. Whoever these people are, they don't just get a few bottle rockets. Many of them have near-professional fireworks -- rocket to the sky, boom n bloom. And they shoot them of for more than an hour -- with the occasional shot up until midnite. All quite illegal, of course, and we hear sirens as well as explosions, presumably from the cops in a vain (I hope) effort the find and arrest these miscreants. To me, they're symbols of independence.