When the San Diego County Supervisors work and sweat at what they perceive to be a problem, they can be counted on eventually to get it wrong.

They did it again this week.

They voted unanimously to ban for 45 days marijuana dispensaries mandated by law to help men and women who need the drug for medical reasons ---- principally to reduce pain ---- to give the supes time to draft laws regulating the shops. That's very wrong.

If deja vu is ringing in your brain, it's no wonder.

This struggle over marijuana dispensaries has been going on in California for a long time, heating up in 1996 when the state passed a law legalizing pot for medical purposes.

San Diego County and various others of its junior governments, such as Oceanside and Escondido, have fought the shops ---- "undermined" them, in the words of a supporter of the dispensaries. (The two cities have their own moratoriums.) San Diego County failed in the courts to kill the shops, which is to say it was unable to overturn the law, so this week's moratorium is yet another step.

Curiously, if the county does not come up with an "ordinance" in the 45 days, it can extend its ban for 10 months.

Don't bet the mortgage money that it will develop such an ordinance in the shorter period. If it has not had the smarts to figure it out in 15 years or more, a month and a half won't help. It will take them the 10 months, or maybe 10 years, because it is clearly not a moratorium at all, but a strategy.

The theft of dreams

In the never-ending calculation of the relative evil of crimes and criminals, high on the lists is always the one about stealing money from Salvation Army donation pots outside department stores and on street corners at Christmas time.

That's evil.

But some consideration surely must be given to the vandals and thieves of Oceanside's John Landes Park.

Within the past month, according to reports, they burned up $5,000 worth of Little League equipment stored there, and broke into a snack shack and stole the candy and soft drinks.

Those are eviler crimes by yards.

Little League baseball, whatever the concept's shortcomings, and there are many, nevertheless puts youngsters into the fields under the sun and flame-bright skies of Southern California, to run, throw and swing bats, perchance to have some fun.

To mar the world of Little League and those bucolic ---- dare one say Rockwellian ---- afternoons is a very twisted activity, terribly sad.

There were reports that teenagers who lurk in the park were responsible; they seem to have been spotted with lots of soft drinks and candy. They were wearing sneers.

Their nearness does raise the question of where teenagers belong in 2009, and what they should be doing, and how much freedom they ought to have.

These are big questions for which my betters, and they are legion, have no uniform answer for the terribly obvious reason, I suppose, that kids are not themselves uniform (except for sneers).

A writer of my acquaintance, frustrated at hopeless dealings with his own offspring of certain offensive years, once said that all teens should be institutionalized until the age of 21.

That seemed extreme to me at the time, even though my acquaintance was kidding, but on reflection and on learning this week of the depredations at Landes park, I am not so sure.

In any event, I offer the idea to Little League officials in Oceanside and to other authorities. There will be no charge, and I'd like my name left out of it.

John Van Doorn is a freelance editor and writer. Contact him at jc.vandoorn@gmail.com.