The Hand That Feeds--Denied!
A medical pot group in Chino tries to help the needy, but says city and church officials aren’t having it
By: Alex Distefano
At a time when the Inland Empire is suffering from obscenely high unemployment and foreclosure rates, you’d think public and private agencies would jump at donations to needy families during the holidays.
So it came as a complete shock to the nonprofit San Bernardino Patients Association when its offer to donate food, cash and store vouchers was refused by Chino City Hall and Calvary Chapel Church in Chino Hills. The association suspects this happened after church and city officials realized the association was a medical-cannabis collective.
But, charity’s charity, right, regardless of the source? Maybe not.
To be fair, the medical marijuana community tends to be a magnet for controversy.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley made headlines recently when he announced plans to prosecute the majority of the city’s dispensaries, saying they were nothing more than illegal weed purveyors. Muddying the waters further, the Obama administration has asked local prosecutors to back off from medical marijuana establishments who comply with state law, such as California’s voter-approved Prop. 215.
In Chino, the problem started when the San Bernardino Patients Association decided to raise money and food to help the less fortunate, says Marina Drabkin, an independent consultant for the group. So they reached out to Calvary Chapel. After meeting with a woman with the church, Drabkin says, the church initially accepted the donations, but later abruptly rebuffed them.
“The woman we met with, she wanted to know more about us,” Drabkin says. “We sent her over documents and letters to let her know what we do and to show that we comply with all laws and regulations. We even invited her to come down to visit.”
But according to Drabkin, the church disavowed from involving itself in the association’s charity after they realized the connection to medical marijuana. Church officials failed to respond to the Weekly’s multiple requests for interviews to get their side of the story.
The association next tried the City of Chino. The city also refused, the association suspecting it was for the same reason.
“Why not accept these items from us?” association employee Camille Romero asks.
Drabkin says that association members have been bringing in canned food and other non-perishable food items, as well as donated cash and gift cards. “We have cards for grocery stores and even places like Target,” she says. “We really do a lot for our community. Everyone out here knows us.”
“I personally can’t comprehend it. There are no excuses for this,” Drabkin adds. “We wanted to do a food drive to give back to our community for the holiday season, but they would rather have people go hungry than to overcome their personal stigma attached to cannabis.”
But the City of Chino paints a different picture of how things happened.
The refusal of donations stems from a procedural matter, says city spokesperson Michelle Van Der Linden.
Apparently, for needy families to receive donated items through the city, they must register first. When the association approached the city, Van Der Linden says, all 134 registered families had already been approved to receive food and other donated items through other parties.
“We didn’t accept the donations from them, because all of the families we had registered had all of their needs met,” Van Der Linden says. “It has nothing to do with their type of establishment, we are not singling them out for what they do.”
Nevertheless, the association doesn’t seem convinced.
“It’s horrific,” Drabkin says. “. . . They told me at first [that] they have difficulty feeding hundreds of families out there. For this decision to come from a local church and our city is just bizarre.”
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This story is a total travesty because I know for a fact that city/county programs give the bare minimum, so to say everyones needs on their list was met as a bare faced lie. Why just give a family or single person the basics to survive when other organizations are offering extra to help the individual/family in need. It doesnt make any sense and someone should really sue the city for discrimination because I bet if you were to contact the people on the cities list I bet many of them would say their basic needs werent fully met and they couldve greatly used your donations to help them.