Welfare weed: Berkeley orders dispensaries to give out FREE marijuana for low-income residents

Berkeley residents with a prescription and annual income of less than $32,000 will be eligible for free pot

Dispensaries have to give out 2 percent of their stash







Low-income residents in a California city will soon be able to get high for free.

The Berkeley City Council has passed a law requiring medical marijuana dispensaries to distribute 2 percent of their stashes to people making less than $32,000 per year or $46,000 per family.

Under the new ordinance, which was approved unanimously this summer, only city residents will be eligible and they must have a prescription.



'Basically, the city council wants to make sure that low-income, homeless, indigent folks have access to their medical marijuana, their medicine,” Councilman Darryl Moore told CBS San Francisco.



Low-income residents of Berkeley, California, will soon be eligible for free marijuana at dispensaries such as the Berkeley Patients Group (pictured)

The law requires that the free medical marijuana, which is legal in California, 'be the same quality on average as medical cannabis that is dispensed to other members,' according to Berkeleyside.

Mayor Tom Bates says the move is an effort to provide equal access to what California law considers medication.



'There are some truly compassionate cases that need to have medical marijuana — but it's expensive,' Bates told the New York Times.

'You hear stories about people dying from cancer who don’t have the money.'

Critics of the program are furious.

'It’s ludicrous, over-the-top madness,' Bishop Ron Allen, a former addict who runs the International Faith Based Coalition, told Fox News.



'Why would Berkeley City Council want to keep their poverty-stricken under-served high, in poverty and lethargic?'



'Instead of taking steps to help the most economically vulnerable residents get out of that state, the city has said, "Let’s just get everybody high,"' lobbyist John Lovell, of the California Narcotic Officers’ Association, told the Times.



Dispensary owners say the ordinance only formalizes the common practice of distributing 'compassion' — the name given to free medical marijuana.



'We do this on our own, so we certainly welcome the city mandating that all dispensaries create these sorts of programs,' Sean Luse, who runs the Berkeley Patients Group , told Berkeleyside.

But they're weary of the 2 percent mandate.

'I do think there could be problems if we’re oversupplying demand and giving away more cannabis than is legitimately needed. We’ll see how this plays out.'