SUPERVISORS PLACE ANTI-POT INITIATIVE ON BALLOT

Supervisors voted Tuesday to place a measure on the June ballot to
repeal Measure G and adopt the state medical marijuana limits.

Measure G was approved by 58.5 percent of county voters in November
2000. Under the initiative's provisions, marijuana cultivation and
possession to be given the lowest priority by county law enforcement
officers, and the district attorney's office was not forbidden to
prosecute any marijuana case involving 25 or fewer adult, flowering
plants or the equivalent amount of dried marijuana.

Both former County Counsel Peter Klein and current County Counsel
Jeanine Nadel have told supervisors many Measure G provisions are
contrary to current law.

Nadel has said several times the Measure G provision that directs the
board of supervisors to "use its funding authority to ensure the
district attorney shall not prosecute any violation" of marijuana
laws involving 25 or fewer plants violates California's constitution,
which reserves budgeting authority to elected officials.

Although passed in 2000, the provisions of Measure G were not added
to the county's legal codes until April 2007.

In spite of its questionable legality, Measure G has been
acknowledged as functionally authoritative by both
pro- and anti-pot political forces. The pro-pot community
consistently referred to Measure G during the year-long process in
which the board's Criminal Justice Committee sought to write a
medical marijuana ordinance for Mendocino County.

While Supervisor Michael Delbar preferred a six-plant limit, and
Supervisor Jim Wattenburger sought an 18-plant limit, many of those
who spoke in defense of growers' rights said the county had no
authority to contravene the 25-plant limit encoded in Measure G.

At one point, supervisors agreed with that argument, adopting a
25-plant limit for the county's medical marijuana ordinance in August 2007.

In December, taking part of an idea presented by Supervisor John
Pinches, the board changed that limit to 25 plants per assessor's parcel.

The new, as-yet unnumbered ballot initiative states: "A qualified
patient or primary caregiver may possess or maintain for medical
purposes only those amounts as set forth in Health and Safety Code
section 11362 and as amended by state or federal law."

That means, if voters approve the initiative, the new limits for
medical marijuana in Mendocino County will be six mature or 12
immature plants, and a maximum of eight ounces of dried marijuana per
qualified patient.

According to Nadel, a patient could grow or possess more medical
marijuana than that if he or she has a doctor's recommendation
stipulating that more marijuana is necessary to provide adequate
relief for the patient's condition.

The issue was approved by supervisors 4-1, with Supervisor David
Colfax opposing.

In December, Colfax voted in favor of the final version of the
board's medical marijuana ordinance, which set the plant limit at 25
plants per assessors' parcel, adding he had received many calls from
constituents after the December vote. He also acknowledged he had
recently done a lot of reading on the topic of marijuana.

Colfax said he felt it was not fair for an initiative to go directly
from an idea in a few peoples' minds to the county ballot without
first going through the signature-gathering phase. He noted that in
1984 he was a prime mover behind a failed ballot initiative he termed
Save Our Local Economy.

"I am not going to support this, because if this goes forward it's
going to be known as the 'supervisors" initiative.' I will not
support it. I think it would be an insult. If there are people here
who feel it should be on the ballot, great. Get out of here, get out
on the street, start getting those signatures. That's what I did in
1984," Colfax said.

Pinches favored putting the question to the voters. "There are only
two things that are going to affect marijuana industry here in this
county," he said. "One, if the demand goes away, which it isn't going
to do and hasn't done now for 40 years. If anything, the demand is
going up. So that's not going to change.

"The other thing is, if we are able to increase law enforcement on it
by a considerable amount. But that is not going to happen, because we
do not have and we will never have enough money to do that. So we
have this marijuana thing here. And it is going to stay here.

"I am not worried about people who are growing 20 or 25 or 30 or 50
marijuana plants. I am worried about people who are growing 10,000 or
20,000 or 30,000 marijuana plants, who are sucking our rivers dry,
who are leveling off the tops of our mountains, who are increasing
the level of violence in our county. Those are the ones I am worried about.

"To me, that kind of activity is totally unacceptable," he said. "To
the people out there who are growing pot to pay doctor bills or make
house payments, I do not regard those people as criminals. I would
say that a lot of people up in my district in the northern part of
the county, a large percentage of the people there make some part of
their living from marijuana. I do not regard those people as criminals.

"On the other hand, there seems to be sea change happening on
peoples' attitudes toward marijuana right now. So I am going to
support this measure, because I think people have a right to vote on
whether they want to repeal Measure G or not.

"We have got to come together on this question of marijuana, and I
think we are moving forward on it," Pinches said.

The board also voted to reconfirm it wanted its medical marijuana
ordinance to become law. That ordinance set the plant limit at 25
plants per assessor's parcel, provided for zip ties, and for setback
zones from schools, churches and other youth-oriented facilities.

A motion to reconfirm the ordinance as law was approved 3-2, with
Colfax and Pinches voting no.

Delbar clarified that should the "Negative G" ballot measure pass, it
would limit medical marijuana cultivation to six mature or 12
immature plants at a given time, per card holder. The 25-plant limit
per parcel would still stand; up to four card-carrying growers per
parcel could legally grow six medical marijuana plants each.