For Ophelia Chong, the scene in El Monte last weekend was familiar — hundreds of people marching with signs bearing a unified message, “No marijuana here,” and “Keep children safe.”

In other words: The City Council should reject a proposal to build a medical marijuana growing and distribution facility proposed on the El Monte-Temple City border.

Last year, protesters successfully fought a cannabis project Chong was involved in. Like this one, Chong’s project was planned for an area with a large Chinese population, and it was a coalition of largely Asian-Americans who united to fend off what they saw as a safety threat from legal weed in their community.

But that failed project was 400-plus miles away in San Francisco.

“It sounds like they’re using the same template in the San Gabriel Valley,” said Chong, who runs a marijuana-education advocacy group geared toward Asian-Americans. “It almost looks exactly the same.”

The El Monte City Council on Tuesday is scheduled to make a final decision on the medical marijuana growing, packaging and distribution center planned for a former furniture store at 4400 Temple City Blvd. — but first it will need to contend with neighbors’ opposition that Chong and developer Teresa Tsai agree is based on a long-held cultural stigma and generational differences.

“Asian-Americans are not treating this as a plant,” Tsai said in an interview. “They’re categorizing marijuana as the same thing as heroin or cocaine.”

The numbers

Opposition to marijuana is stiff among Asian-Americans. They comprised the ethnic group in California least likely to support legalizing cannabis ahead of 2016’s Proposition 64, which did just that.

Some 57 percent of Asian respondents said they supported legal weed, compared to nearly 72 percent of African-Americans, 69 percent of Latinos and 62 percent of whites, according to a UC Berkeley poll.

According to U.S. Census estimates, 60 percent of Temple City residents are Asian, while 29 percent are Asian in El Monte.

Then there’s a generational divide that transcends ethnicity: The poll found three-quarters of all respondents age 18-25 supported legal marijuana. Support dropped the older the respondent, down to 58 percent among people older than 65.

2016 wasn’t the first time Californians approved a weed-related policy at the ballot box, but it was the first time that Asian-American support for a pro-marijuana measure breached 50 percent, according to Chong. “Most likely it was because of the age group,” she said. Like those of other ethnicities, younger Asian-Americans are more likely to support legal marijuana than their parents.

Chong also credits educational efforts by groups like hers, Asian Americans for Cannabis Education, media reporting and people such as CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta for helping turn the tide. Her nonprofit works with and highlights Asian-American marijuana entrepreneurs to inform the public about the plant.

“These are people there who have healthy, productive lives — doctors, attorneys, everything — and are in cannabis (businesses),” Chong said. “That’s what I’m trying to show.”

In many Asian-American cultures, the stigma is strong: Chong said some of it is spurred by parents’ fear their children will be unable to care for them when they’re old if the children get involved with marijuana, spurred from what she describes as “Reefer Madness”-like propaganda.

Tsai’s plan and the opposition to it have been covered closely by Chinese media, including World Journal — a national publication geared toward Chinese living in the U.S.

Stories and a video have focused on safety concerns, how the opposition group has organized and its size, which counts hundreds of people.

Organized effort

The group of people who are rallying against the dispensary are well-organized — using Chinese messaging app WeChat and more old fashioned efforts to build its coalition. It prompted Chong to wonder out loud whether an outside religious group which backed the San Francisco protesters are supporting this one as well.

Jimmy Liu, one of the opposition organizers, said the group has tasked one person to connect with churches for help in handing out fliers, but the effort is a local one and is spurred by residents’ concern for their community.

They’re also banding together online: 5,200 people have signed an online petition urging El Monte Mayor Andre Quintero to reject Tsai’s proposal.

The facts

Marijuana remains illegal at the federal level but legal in California for recreational and medical use. The federal government places it in the same category as heroin, Schedule 1, because it has a “high potential for abuse.”

“It’s unlikely the federal government will clamp down on facilities that are growing,” Quintero, a prosecutor for the city of Los Angeles, said. His own thinking on medical marijuana has evolved in recent years to the point where he now supports businesses like Tsai’s, he said.

Cannabis remains the most commonly used illicit drug in the U.S. Using it can impair brain development in young people, while smoking it can irritate the lungs, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Liu said people shouldn’t lose sight of that.

“Even though marijuana is legal in California, people still need to think about the bad effects of that,” he said. “The marijuana doesn’t change — it still affects people to become crazy. Not only your body but also your mind. Some people become criminals because of using drugs.”

Tsai said she wished opponents to the El Monte project would focus on the promise of medical use of marijuana. Research has suggested medical marijuana may reduce opioid use for people with pain and that it can reduce nausea, inflammation and muscle control problems, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Meanwhile, a nonintoxicating component of marijuana, CBD, is used to treat seizure disorders. The FDA has even approved a prescription version of CBD called Epidiolex.

Liu said he has no problem with people using marijuana. He just doesn’t want it grown in the San Gabriel Valley.

“If Teresa can move the factory 100 miles away, it’s OK for me,” he said. “She can buy farmland in Nevada or somewhere else where there’s not a lot of population.”

On the other hand, the group believes smoking or using CBD balms is fine: “Our objection is not the personal use of marijuana, but simply the negative impact to our community,” a flier distributed by the group reads.

The project details

To combat what officials see as mischaracterization, Quintero, Assistant City Manager Alma Martinez, police Chief David Reynoso, Public Information Officer Priscilla Segura and Tsai invited this publication for a lengthy interview about the project.

Some of the statements included in the opposition’s literature was misleading, Tsai said, and were reiterated in World Journal, for example, concerns about the size. Alhough the building is more than 71,000 square feet, Tsai said the planned growing area is just a small component of that.

The opposition is also concerned about attracting a criminal element. “Large sums of cash transaction will attract all kinds of criminals, or even fights between gangsters and create other potential safety issues,” one letter from the group reads.

But Reynoso said he’s confident this operation would not pose a public safety problem. Cameras in the building would be streamed directly to police and Reynoso would even be able to access the feeds on his phone. Plus the building will have 24/7 security and no retail component, he said.

“With no other business do we have this type of security oversight — not even a bank,” he said. “I don’t foresee any issues this business will bring that other businesses don’t bring.”

What about the cash? Will this business be filled with piles of cash big enough to swim in, a la Scrooge McDuck?

Not quite, Tsai said. Because marijuana users would not be buying products directly from this facility, it won’t have a large amount of cash on hand. Armored trucks will pick up money daily and Tsai is currently working with a company to determine which banks — such as credit unions or those chartered by Native American nations — would best serve the facility’s needs.

The stink over the stink

Marijuana is stinky, but Tsai said passersby and nearby residents won’t smell anything from her facility if it’s approved, thanks to such air quality measures as negative air pressure, a sealed ventilation system and carbon filters.

“A pedestrian can walk by and not even know what’s going on in there,” she said.

Tsai said she’s on the board of directors of four existing legal cannabis facilities, including two in downtown Los Angeles. She declined to reveal the locations or names of the businesses because she said she feared the safety of the people who work, given the tense climate around the El Monte project.

City officials say residents should feel confident at El Monte’s approach — a measured one that allows only production of medical marijuana. Recreational cannabis is not allowed, nor are any sales directly to consumers.

“We took a very methodical approach,” Quintero said.

Jeong Park and Christopher Yee contributed reporting.