Sebastopol, Calif. -- When Robert Jacob ran for
the City Council here last year, he had already made the list of “Forty
Under 40 of 2012” in a local business magazine. So it was to be expected
that his business gave him face recognition among voters on the
campaign trail, many of whom greeted him by exclaiming, “You’re the pot
guy!”
A founder of Sebastopol’s lone dispensary for medical
marijuana, Peace in Medicine, and a strong advocate of its use, Mr.
Jacob far outraised and outspent his rivals by running the most
expensive campaign in Sebastopol’s history. He won and quickly became
vice mayor but was not done.
This month, Mr. Jacob, 36, was chosen as
mayor by the City Council — the first person from the medical marijuana
industry to become mayor of an American city, according to cannabis
advocates.
The selection spoke to the wider social acceptance of
marijuana, medical or otherwise, in the United States, one year after
Colorado and Washington voted to become the first two states to legalize
its recreational use. That it happened in Sebastopol, a city in Sonoma
County that retains its hippie past despite the gentrification in recent
years that has made it known more for its pinot noir than its
traditional Gravenstein apples, was hardly a surprise.
Mr.
Jacob’s political ascendancy also points to the marijuana industry’s
growing economic power, and it hints at what may lie ahead in Colorado
and Washington. In its list of “Forty Under 40,” The North Bay Business
Journal listed Mr. Jacob alongside people from the food, wine, tech,
finance and other more conventional sectors. In Sebastopol, a city of
7,400 people an hour north of San Francisco, his medical marijuana
dispensary was the 14th-biggest business in 2012, funneling $46,400 in
taxes to the city.
Still, the federal government regards any use
of marijuana as illegal. What is more, in the last couple of years,
United States attorneys have shut down hundreds of dispensaries across
California after sending warning letters to operators, landlords and
local officials who passed or put into effect ordinances regulating
medical marijuana businesses in their municipalities. In the letters,
the prosecutors, working with the Drug Enforcement Administration and
the Internal Revenue Service, threatened the recipients with criminal
charges and the seizure of assets.
So as both the mayor and a
medical marijuana businessman, Mr. Jacob could be seen as a symbol of
how federal laws lag behind the times, or he could become an inviting
target.
While joking that talking about his dispensary’s position
in relation to federal law “makes me sweat,” Mr. Jacob said he felt
confident about its legal status. City officials said that no one
associated with Mr. Jacob’s dispensary or in the city’s government had
received a warning letter from the federal authorities.
“We don’t
push the envelope,” Mr. Jacob said. “We really operate within a
medicinal perspective, from our name to our advertising to the way we
display our medicine to the way we treat each individual patient’s needs
when they walk through the door. We’re an organization that respects
the intent of cannabis as medicine.”
The dispensary, which opened
in 2007, is in a nondescript gray, two-story building on one of the
city’s main avenues. Nothing outside indicates the nature of its
business. Inside, Peace in Medicine cultivates the atmosphere of a
clinic or spa, with works from local artists on its walls, a world away
from the clublike ambience and images of fast cars, Bob Marley and
bikini-clad women found in many other dispensaries.
Lawrence
McLaughlin, the city attorney and manager, said the thought that the
mayor was engaged in an activity considered illegal under federal law
was “not a worry at this point for me.” He added, “I can see the trend
where things are going in the United States over all regardless of who’s
in power in Washington, being that marijuana use is being legalized in
more and more states.”
A resident of Sebastopol since 2004, Mr.
Jacob is a relative newcomer. He grew up in Rodeo, in the East Bay, the
son of immigrants, his father from Mexico and his mother from Iraq. He
moved with his family to the Central Valley, but uncomfortable in the
area’s conservative culture because he was gay, he said, at 15 he
decamped to San Francisco, where he first lived in a homeless shelter
for youths. In San Francisco, Mr. Jacob went to high school and also
worked for several social services groups, helping victims of domestic
violence and H.I.V.-positive youths.
After moving here, Mr. Jacob
said he found many people “hiding in their homes and basement and
cabins, cultivating cannabis,” which inspired him and a handful of other
business partners to take their first anxious steps toward opening the
dispensary.
“We went to a pay phone and I called the Police
Department,” Mr. Jacob recalled. “I said: ‘Hi, I’m Robert. I am a
medical marijuana patient, and I want to grow cannabis in Sebastopol.
Can you tell me what the rules are?’ ”
A police officer explained
California’s regulations to him. “Then we all got into the car and
drove away from the pay phone as fast as possible,” he said. “We were
afraid that they were going to come down and get us.”
The
dispensary found a receptive community here. Sebastopol’s population has
grown older and wealthier in recent decades, but its politics are
rooted on the left.
Green Party candidates have made it to the
City Council. In the past year, the Council has passed ordinances
requiring solar power on new homes and commercial buildings, as well as
restricting drive-through businesses and chain stores. Its divisions,
said Sarah Glade Gurney, a council member and former mayor, are
divisions inside the left.
“People like to argue with the Greens, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t green themselves,” she said.
As
for Mr. Jacob, who was unanimously chosen by the Council to be mayor,
he said that he wants to be known for more than being the first medical
marijuana insider to become mayor of an American city.
Referring
to his management experience overseeing 45 employees at Peace in
Medicine, he said he would work toward uniting the City Council, which
had been divided in recent years over development projects, including a
CVS pharmacy. Having supported the new restrictions on businesses, he
said that he wants to preserve Sebastopol’s small-town charm.
“There’s
been a lot about me being the marijuana mayor,” Mr. Jacob told a
gathering at a Christmas luncheon at the Fire Department.
“I’m
doing everything I can in many ways to change that perspective. And if
that means I’ve got to put on dress shoes that hurt my feet and a tie
every day, and wear a nice suit and make sure it’s pressed and pay for a
dry cleaner, I’m going to do that.”
A version of this article
appears in print on December 26, 2013, on page A16 of the New York
edition with the headline: In California, a Mayor’s Rise Is a Sign of
the Times.
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