Category: Health

By Terrie Best – San Diego Americans for Safe Access / March 17, 2016

San Diego, CA – The County Board of Supervisors met yesterday [March 16] and the patient community barely escaped a ban on medical cannabis.

The ban would have affected unincorporated areas of the county, such as Julian, Ramona and many other rural parcels where it would otherwise be safe and advantageous to cultivate cannabis.

The advantage would be a regulated and local supply of product to the growing number of licensed medical cannabis co-ops in the city of San Diego. The city is the only municipality in the county with a retail distribution ordinance on its books. But, the city’s law does not address the cultivation of cannabis at all. Many cannabis patients saw the need for cultivating a local supply of medicine and began to eye the dysfunctional county ordinance.

The City of San Diego has had a program for a decade now, that allows merchants and restaurants to use the sidewalks in front of their businesses.

It’s called the Public Right of Way (PROW) Program and was passed unanimously by the San Diego Planning Commission in March of 2006.

The program – according to the City’s new info website – allows:

“… merchants with ground-level storefronts in the twelve Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) will now be able to use the sidewalks in front of their businesses to place A-frame signs, limited displays of merchandise, and outdoor cafes without railings. ” (Our emphasis.)

The main Ocean Beach commercial district has such a BID – the OB Mainstreet Association.

Take a walk with us through the streets and sidewalks of Ocean Beach as we visit all the encroachments into public space by restaurants and bars across the community.

Many of the encroachments are welcomed as part of the new trend of cafe-style eateries and any intrusions into that common space are incidental and minimal. Others are where there is plenty of sidewalk or there isn’t much pedestrian traffic.

Some encroachments, however, are actually dangerous and unnecessary. Especially those encroachments that are permanent.

Whether an encroachment is dangerous or not often depends on its particular factors and circumstances.

So, take a walk with us – let us know whether you agree or not.

Nearly Half in Survey Say Airplane Noise Has Increased

The OB Rag conducted a week long survey of our local readers on whether noise from airplanes flying over Ocean Beach or Point Loma had gotten less or more, or stayed the same. This survey was motivated by a series of comments to an article that the noise from airplanes in south OB had definitely increased.

The participants in our unscientific survey numbered 96 – and nearly a majority believed that the noise from airplanes had increased. 46.9% agreed that “there is more airplane noise now” over OB or Point Loma.

Only 14.6% agreed that airplane noise was less. And 29.2% said it was about the same.

But three-quarters of the participants who lived in South OB felt that the noise had increased. 75% of the 16 survey takers from the southern area said the noise was worse now.

Nuclear Shutdown News for February 2016

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the US nuclear power industry in this country and beyond, and highlights the efforts of those who are working to create a nuclear free world.

Last year Nuclear Shutdown News reported on a scandal involving the San Onofre nuclear plant shutdown, and a secret deal that left its ratepayers holding the bag for a multibillion dollar debt for which the public bears no responsibility. This onerous debt will take consumers and their descendants decades to pay off if the powers that be get their way. But the people are fighting back.

… and It’s Not Obamacare’s Fault

By John Lawrence

You can blame lobbyists from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry in conjunction with Republican lawmakers who lobbied the Affordable Care Act to death making it in the long run unaffordable and probably untenable. Why? Because there are no cost containment features in the Act. None. Nada. Zippo.

What that means is that the drug companies can raise the prices of drugs 5000% like Martin Shkreli of Turing Pharmaceuticals did for Daraprim without breaking the law. Shkreli’s arrogance, the latest example of which is calling the Congressmen who interrogated him “imbeciles”, has gotten him into much trouble but not for raising the price of a life-saving drug 5000%.

Somebody is shooting and killing parrots with pellet guns in the OB and Point Loma area. Three parrots have been killed in the last 6 or 7 days.

Five parrots have been killed this year.

Two were found on Monday, Feb. 22nd in the area of Talbot Street and Gage Drive. Number three was found dead near the Mariners Cove Apartments on Point Loma, with an X-ray showing a small pellet in it.

By Dan Bacher / Indybay.org

Legislators, members of commercial fishing families, fishing group representatives and Brown administration officials testified about the dire situation that the salmon and crab fishery is in at a recent forum at the State Capitol on February 11th.

It was during the 43rd Annual Zeke Grader Fisheries Forum of the Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture held in Sacramento.

“This forum works, but the fishermen are not,” said Senator Mike McGuire, Chair of the Committee, in his opening comments. “The salmon and crab fisheries are threatened by a historic crisis. We’re facing a fishery disaster that will impact many families.”

“We’ve gone from abundance to scarcity. The crab fishing fleet is sitting at the docks right now,” said McGuire.

By John Lawrence

I met Suzie at Panera Bread in Liberty Station. She is homeless but not vehicle-less. She used to have a nice home in Point Loma, had lived in the Point Loma – Ocean Beach area for years.

She has been homeless since last April when her boyfriend kicked her out of his apartment. When that happened, she got on Craigslist and bought an RV.

There are many levels and degrees of homelessness, and Suzie is on one of the better off levels. Some homeless persons live on boats in the harbor. So for some, homelessness verges on an alternative lifestyle, the key being whether or not they are forced into the situation or whether their situation is freely chosen.

Geoff Page’s Stand for the Torrey Pines Mocked by Editorial

An editorial in today’s San Diego Union-Tribune was critical of OB’s “Torrey Pines Hero”, the “Man of the Hour” – the guy who brought to a halt – temporarily – Tuesday’s cutting down of two of the trees – Geoff Page.

The editorial took Page to task and mocked his compassion for standing up for the Torrey Pines on the 4600 block of Saratoga in Ocean Beach.

Page had physically blocked work crews from cutting down one of the Torreys, demanding that the workers, the arborist, the city – somebody! – produce the required permits for what they were doing. Page insisted that the work permit as well as the street control permit be shown upon request – as is required.

Our controversial nuclear legacy and questions about health, truth and future risks
By Nicole Hoepner

Sleeping dragons. Stirring the thin blankets of secret cold-war facilities, nuclear power plants and feebly stored radioactive waste.

We quietly sneak around their massive shadows. We tell our children fairy tales of mankind’s control over technology, over nature.

The story of The Atom That Is Keeping Us Safe, but then the unexpected happens and unspeakable horrors awaken and unleash their terror.

It was not a tense stand-off yesterday at the cutting of Torrey Pines on the 4600 block of Saratoga Avenue , but for several hours it was a stand-off – as a local OB man physically blocked the work crew.

Geoff Page, a local resident and contractor, stood in the way of work crews from Atlas Tree Service, until, he insisted, they or the City produced permits for what they were doing. And he wasn’t going to budge until they did.

As soon as he took his position, work on cutting down the two Torrey Pines targeted by the City completely halted, and both the tree service crews and the crane service crews took a several-hour break.