It was a moment for the ages.

Last Friday, the Manteca Chamber of Commerce helped make the grand opening of the city’s first cannabis storefront complete with the prerequisite ribbon and oversized scissors.

Included in the mix was council member and former police chief Charlie Halford.

While his fellow council members were no shows — Dave Breitenbucher would clearly not have attended,  as he has never supported the idea of cannabis sales in Manteca — Halford presented Off the Charts with a resolution on behalf of the city.

Go back 45 years.

Trena Kelley became the city’s first directly elected mayor and its first woman council member on the strength of her tireless efforts to “put children first.”

And one of those things was her pioneering effort to successfully push for limiting the ability of teens and children to access cigarettes.

She was aghast one day to be in the restaurant that for years was known as Johnny’s to see students walking home from Manteca High dropping coins into a vending machine in the dining establishment’s foyer to buy a pack of smokes.

Kelley, using school PTAs, mounted a successful campaign that made Manteca one of the first, if not the first, jurisdiction in California to prohibit vending machines in places of business whose access wasn’t restricted to those 21 years and older.

What would Kelley, who passed away in 2007 at age 86, have thought about cannabis sales in Manteca?

It’s not as simple of a speculative question as you might think.

Kelley clearly was targeting ease of access by minors.

She never publicly stated she was against adults smoking cigarettes per se, although she certainly did not favor smokers carte blanche lighting up where they pleased in venues where they would intermix with non-smokers.

That said, she’d likely appreciate the redundant safeguards to make sure no one under 21 has access to what cannabis stores offer.

The two-step entry procedure is about as bulletproof as you can get for keeping those under 21 out.

The scanning of driver’s licenses before entry into the actual dispensary is the platinum standard.

By isolated entries and scanning, it eliminates those under 21 from co-mingling with legal age buyers, such as what happens in liquor stores.

That eliminates the opportunity for underage shoplifting.

Manteca also imposes the most restrictive requirements for product display.

Not only are all products kept behind counters, but they can’t be handled by customers until they have been bought and bagged.

Imagine the same standards being sold to stores that sell either beer, liquor, cigarettes, or other tobacco products.

Not only do they not have safeguards anywhere close to being as rigorous but the stores in question carry candy, snacks, ice cream, and soda that tends to be a magnet to draw in under-age customers.

There is little doubt that Manteca’s cannabis storefront rules are, and will, keep out those under 21.

It is why the state is absolutely correct to prevent cannabis-based products that have the ability to get the user “high” to any degree from being sold at non-cannabis licensed stores whether it is in a canned drink or some other form.

Liquor stores, convenience stores, and even grocery stores where such products have popped up are a sieve for security and access compared to the protocols in place that channel Fort Knox at cannabis dispensaries controlled by state and local authorities.

The concern that legal marijuana based on California’s rules possess a risk of promoting marijuana as a gateway drug is an interesting concept.

That’s because almost all clientele of such stores already have used cannabis.

The big difference from how adults obtained marijuana before, assuming they didn’t grow it in their own, is a night and day reality.

The growing of a legal cannabis sold through heavily regulated storefront is subject to testing and accounting.

As such, it does not contain chemicals that are harmful.

The potency level is tested and clearly marked similar to dosages of aspirin.

There aren’t rampant environmental issues with how it is grown.

And it certainly doesn’t benefit drug cartels or others that operate outside the law.

Nor, for that matter, does it require customers to make “buys” in dicey situations.

There is an argument that legalizing sales made it easier for illegal sales to flourish.

That may be the case to a degree.

But legal sales assures, just like end of prohibition when it came to alcohol, no “moonshine” style production system with the danger of being tainted is supplying those that buy legal cannabis.

The question of the long-term impact of marijuana use on health is not fully vetted.

Its use, by its very nature, relaxes the user, can impede reaction times in a variety of situations.

There is no real question about health issues connected to the process of legal marijuana production.

The taxpaying consumers of such cannabis are paying for that product’s clarity and to keep their use of it from benefiting the criminal underworld.

There are legitimate health agreements about cannabis use just as there is about alcohol and cigarette youth.

Cannabis has been found to relieve pain in a variety of instances without the use of manufactured pain killers that often have side effects that outweigh the cure.

Excess consumption of anything is not good.

Consider all of that against the background that marijuana didn’t become regulated until the mid-20th century despite not being a modern convention.

Balance that against the rights of legal adults and the need for societies to establish parameters of behavior.

And then balance that against an undeniable truth.

Former and current police officers, some of whom Halford knows, will tell you they’ve never had a violent encounter with someone who was simply on marijuana and committing no other crime.

That contrasts to encounters dramatically with those under the influence of alcohol — and a host of other drugs — who also were committing no other crimes.

We live in, and always will live in, an imperfect world.

Halford changed his mind about legalizing cannabis after thoroughly researching the processes in place, weighing the realties, and reflecting on the clear consensus of the majority of voters in Manteca, San Joaquin County, and California.

That makes Halford pragmatic.

And his statements that he’s never used marijuana but that he’d never say he’d never use it as he might at one point be in a situation where it is the safest alternate for severe pain control, makes him a realist.

It’s been a long and careful journey that has taken Manteca politics from circa 1980 to the point at least one elected leader — and not one that made allowing legalized marijuana sales  a campaign promises — had no qualms about participating in the grand opening of a cannabis dispensary.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com