Morning Report: Reefer-Rule Madness

To the public, a Pacific Beach business is known as PB 420 Cheech & Chong Headquarters. (How subtle!) On a city tax document, it’s Pacific Beach Care Center.

As we watched on Wednesday, the marijuana store became something else: a place to flee. Fast.

When word came that cops were raiding medical pot stores, the owner skedaddled with a box of cash but not the jars of marijuana with names like Train Wreck and Royal Purple.

We don’t know if the store actually got raided, but plenty of others did. In the bigger picture, “no one knows how many places you can buy medical marijuana in the city. No one knows where they should be. No one knows what’s legal or permitted and what isn’t.”

And no clarifications are expected for some time.

In other news:

• San Diego schoolchildren can make up failed classes online, where computers and tutors do the teaching. But federal rules require a qualified teacher to teach every class. So local education officials came up with a creative solution: teachers who don’t seem to actually teach.

  On a related front, the school board is none too pleased about kids teaching other kids.

• Also in education, Houston’s hiring of the San Diego schools superintendent is, at long last, very quite nearly almost a done deal. The suspense was killing us.
• A new report says San Diego County spends less on fire protection than its neighbors to the north. But comparisons are difficult, and the report is partially funded by SDG&E, which has more than a passing interest in the results.

  County Supervisor Dianne Jacob says the lack of a countywide fire agency is “disgraceful.” But, she says, forget about creating one pronto.

• Among 24 urban areas, San Diego County is the lowest in terms of the percentage of eligible people who actually get food stamps. The number here is increasing, but San Diego still lags its counterparts significantly.
• Marijuana shops were raided not only in San Diego but across the county (U-T, NCT and CityBeat), and the South Bay Power Plant’s days may be numbered (U-T).
• A remarkably lewd political sex scandal out of Sacramento has put a Sempra lobbyist on the hot seat. Sempra, the parent company of SDG&E, is investigating, but it says the lobbyist denies reports that she had a tryst with a married GOP assemblyman who helped oversee utilities issues until he resigned in disgrace yesterday. (SacBee)

  Meanwhile, the state capital was “abuzz with gossip: other lawmakers with lobbyist mistresses, inappropriate invitations to romantic dinners, married legislators and industry officials canoodling …” (LAT)

  In other words, a typical Friday night at my house.

• Finally, local radio stations caught Beatlemania yesterday as the Fab Four made news across the world. It’s not the first British invasion here, however.

  On Aug. 28, 1965, the Beatles performed in front of 17,000 people for about 30 minutes at Balboa Stadium. Tickets didn’t cost more than $4.50, a good deal for what a local paper called “ecstasy and emotion.“

  The Beatles were photographed, got keys to the city from local girls and told a radio DJ that a joint album with Elvis Presley, whom they’d met the night before, wasn’t in the cards.

  They also answered questions at a press conference, where John Lennon provided this advice to teens: “Don’t get pimples.”

— RANDY DOTINGA