CALIFORNIANS TIRE OF SMOKE OVER MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Local Governments Act to Bring Some Law and Order Over Operations Benefiting From Proposition 215

UKIAH, Calif. -- There is probably no marijuana-friendlier place in
the country than here in Mendocino County, where plants can grow more
than 15 feet high, where medical marijuana clubs adopt stretches of
highway, and the sticky, sweet aroma of cannabis fills this city's
streets during the autumn harvest.

Lately, however, residents of Mendocino County, like those in other
parts of California, are wondering if the state's embrace of
marijuana for medicinal purposes has gone too far.

Medical marijuana was legalized by California voters in 1996, and
since then 11 other states have followed, even though federal law
still bans the sale of marijuana. But some frustrated residents and
law-enforcement officials say the California law has increasingly and
unintentionally provided legal cover for large-scale marijuana
growers -- and the problems such big-money operations can attract.

Push-Back Increasing

"It's a clear shield for commercial operations," said Mike Sweeney,
60, a supporter of both medical marijuana and a local ballot measure
on June 3 that called for new limits on the drug in Mendocino. "And
we don't want those here."

The outcome of the ballot measure is not known, as votes are still
being counted, but such community push-back is increasingly common
across the state, even in the most liberal communities. In recent
years, dozens of local governments have banned or restricted clubs
and dispensaries (which provide medical marijuana to patients) in the
face of public safety issues involved in its sale and cultivation,
including crime and environmental damage.

"If folks had to get their dope, sorry, they would just have to get
it somewhere else," said Sheriff Mark Pazin of Merced County, east of
San Francisco, one of the many jurisdictions to impose new restrictions.

Under the 1996 law, known as Proposition 215, patients need a
prescription to acquire medicinal marijuana, but the law gave little
guidance as to how people were to acquire it. That gave rise to some
patients with marijuana prescriptions growing their own in limited
quantities, the opening of clubs or dispensaries to make it available
and growers going large-scale to keep those outlets supplied.

In turn, that led to the kind of worries that have bubbled up in
Arcata, home of Humboldt State University, where town elders say
roughly 1 in 5 homes are "indoor grows," with rooms or even entire
structures converted into marijuana greenhouses.

That shift in cultivation, caused in part by record-breaking seizures
by drug agents of outdoor harvests, has been blamed for a housing
shortage for Humboldt students, residential fires and the powerful --
and distracting -- smell of the plant in some neighborhoods during harvest.

"I naively thought it was a skunk," said Jeff Knapp, an Arcata
resident who has a neighbor who is a grower.

In May, Arcata declared a moratorium on clubs to allow the City
Council time to address the problem. Los Angeles, which has more than
180 registered marijuana clubs, the most of any city, also declared a
moratorium last year.

"There were a handful initially and then all the sudden, they started
to sprout up all over," said Dennis Zine, a member of the Los Angeles
City Council. "We had marijuana facilities next to high schools and
there were high school kids going over there and there was a lot of
abuse taking place."

But while even advocates of medical marijuana say they recognize that
the dispensary system has problems, they question the bans.

"I think there's no doubt there's been abuse, but there's probably no
system created by human beings that hasn't been abused," said Bruce
Mirken, the director of communications for the Marijuana Policy
Project in Washington, which promotes the drug's legalization. "But
the answer to that is not the wholesale throwing out the baby with
the bath water."

All told, about 80 California cities have adopted moratoriums on the
dispensaries with more than 60 others banning them outright,
according to Americans for Safe Access, which advocates for medical
marijuana research and treatment. In addition, 11 counties have
adopted some sort of ban or moratorium.

'Wet' and 'Dry' Patchwork

Such laws have led to a kind of Prohibition patchwork of "wet" and
"dry" areas. In Visalia, a city of 120,000 in the state's Central
Valley, the local dispensary was denied a permit on Main Street, so
instead it set up shop on a lonely section of country highway. Other
clubs have retreated into people's homes.

Kris Hermes, spokesman for Americans for Safe Access, said that
despite the bans, eight counties and about 30 cities had also
established regulations meant to legitimize the dispensaries.

Zine said the moratorium on new clubs in Los Angeles would allow city
officials time to develop regulations and zoning, something advocates
for medical marijuana say they welcome.

"There's tons of human behavior that you and I might not want to have
anything to do with," said Allen St. Pierre, the executive director
of National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "But if
they are legal, there ought to a legal means to purchase the
commodity and do business."