At Tuesday’s (July 14, 2026) Glendale City Council meeting, Councilmember Vartan Gharpetian pulled a routine consent-calendar item — the acceptance of a $47,623 grant from the California Highway Patrol’s Cannabis Tax Fund — and declined to vote for it, explaining that because the money originates from state cannabis sales taxes, and because he has opposed cannabis sales from the beginning, he could not support the funding. The gesture changed nothing. His colleagues approved the item unanimously, the grant will be accepted, and the Glendale Police Department will continue one of the most robust impaired-driving training programs in the country. What the abstention did accomplish was to put on record a position so internally inconsistent that it deserves examination: a vote against money whose entire purpose is to combat the very harm the councilmember says he fears.
Consider what the grant actually funds. As Sergeant Brian Duncan explained to the Council, these Proposition 64 dollars pay for standardized field sobriety training, advanced roadside impaired-driver enforcement, and the department’s drug recognition program — training that has reached virtually the entire Glendale police force and extends to allied agencies in Burbank, Pasadena, and the San Gabriel Valley. Glendale bans cannabis sales, so not a dime of this money comes from Glendale storefronts; it comes from a statewide tax that Californians approved at the ballot box and that will be collected whether Glendale takes its share or not. Refusing it would not reduce cannabis consumption by a single gram. It would simply mean that Glendale taxpayers foot the bill for training the state was offering to fund — or worse, that the training doesn’t happen at all, leaving fewer officers equipped to pull impaired drivers off our streets.
The logic of the abstention collapses further when applied consistently. Governments have long funded public-safety and intervention programs with revenue from alcohol taxes, tobacco settlements, and gambling proceeds — precisely on the theory that industries associated with social harms should help pay to mitigate them. Nobody suggests a councilmember who dislikes drinking should reject alcohol-tax-funded DUI checkpoints; that would punish the public to make a point about the product. If Councilmember Gharpetian believes cannabis impairs drivers — and he said exactly that from the dais — then a fund dedicated to catching and deterring impaired drivers is the last thing he should oppose. Principled opposition to cannabis is a legitimate political position. But a symbolic vote against the tools that protect Glendale families from impaired drivers isn’t principle. It’s posture, and the public safety of this city deserves better than posture.
