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2 <br />My name is Sherry Truong, and I am a sophomore attending University of California, Davis. I want to thank you for serving <br />the residents and businesses of San Leandro as mayor. I go to school in Davis, but I was born and raised in Oakland. I come <br />back to the Bay Area every week to attend a church in San Leandro called Heritage Baptist Church. It is a church that I have <br />attended since I was nine years old. <br />I am writing to you to express my strong opposition to the proposal to allow the licensing of medical marijuana facilities to <br />do business in the city of San Leandro. Although I am not a resident of San Leandro, I spend much of my time in San <br />Leandro at church or while door knocking. While I am sympathetic to a patient who is undergoing serious medical issues and <br />a physician’s desire to help ease the discomfort of the patient’s ailment, I think it is important to separate a physician-patient <br />issue from that of the allowance of a marijuana dispensary facility being allowed to do business in San Leandro. <br />By allowing these type of facilities into San Leandro will greatly encourage increased crime including armed robberies, <br />burglaries, drug dealing, murders, and other violent crimes. Although San Leandro is not crime-free, I feel much safer here <br />than in Oakland. With this proposal, however, San Leandro may be taking one step closer to being a city full of crime. In <br />addition, the allowance of these type of facilities will be a cause for potential structural fires, increase in traffic, loitering and <br />noise. It also increases the potential for more drivers being on the road who will be driving while under the influence of <br />marijuana. Heritage Baptist Church has a bus ministry that goes to different neighborhoods in San Leandro to pick up and <br />drop off attendees and members of the church. Many of these people who utilize the bus ministry of the church are <br />elementary school students. The last thing that I would want to attend is a funeral of a child who died because s/he was going <br />to church via our bus ministry when the bus got into a car accident with a person under the influence of marijuana. <br />By allowing these type of facilities into San Leandro, it is also encouraging usage of this substance among minors which <br />could lead to possible substance abuse and other long term health problems for these minors as they get older. <br />The lack of rigid regulation and the many possible loopholes for the criminal element of society to manipulate makes the idea <br />of a medical marijuana facility a very bad proposition for San Leandro. <br />I am asking that you and our other council members not move forward with this proposal. There are existing facilities in <br />Oakland and San Lorenzo. It is not necessary to place one here in San Leandro. <br />Thank you for taking the time to review and take under consideration my request for you to oppose the medical marijuana <br />dispensary idea. <br /> <br /> <br />Sincerely, <br /> <br /> <br />Sherry Truong