MARIJUANA HOTBED RETREATS ON MEDICINAL USE

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, 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 under state law by California voters
in 1996, and since then 11 other states have followed, even though
federal law still bans the sale of any 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.

"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 cannabis
clubs, more formally known as dispensaries, that 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 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 one in five 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 plants grown outdoors, 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 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 with
more than 60 others banning the clubs outright, according to
Americans for Safe Access, which advocates for medical marijuana
research and treatment. In addition, 11 counties have also adopted
some sort of ban or moratorium.

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 club was denied a permit on Main Street, so instead
set up shop on a lonely section of country highway. Other clubs have
retreated into people's homes.

Kris Hermes, legal campaign director for Americans for Safe Access,
said that despite the bans, 8 counties and about 30 cities had also
established regulations meant to legitimize the clubs.

Mr. Zine said the moratorium 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 the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or
Norml, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington. "But if they are
legal, there ought to be a legal means to purchase the commodity and
do business."

Such regulations were passed in 2005 in San Francisco, which now has
a 10-page application for a club permit.

Kevin Reed, owner of the Green Cross, was the first owner to get a
permit in January. But he said some of the city's other two dozen
clubs were struggling to get their paperwork. "It's taking
substantially more time to move through the permit process than was
envisioned," Mr. Reed said in an e-mail message. The city's board
just extended the permit deadline until next year.

New regulations are also in the offing for local and state law
enforcement, which has often found itself confused by the overlapping
- -- and sometimes contradictory -- federal, state and local laws.
Under a state law that took effect in 2004, counties can set their
own limits on the amount of medical marijuana; in Mendocino, for
example, growers are allowed 25 mature plants, while most counties allow six.

Jerry Brown, the state attorney general, plans to release guidelines
this summer to clarify the differences.

"These dispensaries aren't supposed to be big profit centers," Mr.
Brown said. "This is supposed to be for individual use."

The 2004 law also recognized the right of patients and caregivers to
cultivate marijuana as a group, something law enforcement officials
say has been abused.

Bob Nishiyama, the major crimes task force commander in Mendocino
County, said there were places with 500 plants and 20 Proposition 215
letters tacked to a fence. "And technically, that's legal because
people can have 25 plants," he said.

By any measure, medical marijuana in California is a moneymaker. In
March, a group of California club owners testified before the state
Board of Equalization that their industry had pumped some $100
million in sales tax into state coffers, representing more than $1
billion in sales.

Like many law enforcement officials, Mr. Nishiyama says he does not
have a problem with medical marijuana, just with those who are exploiting it.

"If you're growing six plants and smoking it in your own house, I
could care less," he said.
Most states that have passed subsequent medical marijuana laws have
been more precise than California voters were in 1996. New Mexico,
for example, allows only patients with seven medical conditions,
including cancer, AIDS and epilepsy, to receive medical marijuana.

"California is an aberration, because it does not designate specific
disease types, it does not designate weights or plant source, and it
has what might be the most fungible or elastic definition of
care-giver," said Mr. St. Pierre, of Norml. Every proposition after
Proposition 215 has been "narrower and narrower and more restrictive
in scope," he said.

Also complicating law enforcement's job is that marijuana is still
illegal in the eyes of the federal government, which has been
increasingly aggressive about prosecuting club owners they feel have
crossed the line into commercial drug dealing.

Among those recently convicted in California include a doctor and his
wife from Cool who were given five years each in March for conspiracy
to sell marijuana and growing more than 100 plants; a club owner from
Bakersfield who pleaded guilty in March to possession of 40 pounds of
marijuana with intent to distribute; and Luke Scarmazzo, a
28-year-old club owner and aspiring rapper who faces 20 years to life
in prison after a conviction last month for running a
multimillion-dollar club in Modesto that the government called a
criminal enterprise.

And last year, the Drug Enforcement Administration threatened to
seize buildings from landlords who rented space to clubs, resulting
in some closings across the state.

For all the federal and local opposition, marijuana as medicine has
become an accepted part of life in many communities in California.
Advocates say the drug helps patients with everything from the
wasting effects of chemotherapy and AIDS to treatment of anxiety and headaches.

But it is not cheap. At Med X, the raided Los Angeles club, the most
expensive marijuana, called Blueberry Kush, was priced at $490 an
ounce. That economic impact includes numerous ancillary businesses
that serve the cannabis culture, including thriving horticulture
shops, and Oakland's Oaksterdam University, a trade school where
students can sign up for semester-long courses on marijuana cultivation.

For some, growing has become a second career. In Arcata, a
29-year-old man, who asked that his name not to be used for fear of
arrest, said that he earned about $25,000 every three months from
selling marijuana grown in a back room to club owners from Southern California.

But others in Arcata are less welcoming. Kevin L. Hoover, the editor
of the local newspaper, The Eye, has made a practice of confronting
people he believes are growing marijuana. Their houses are easy to
spot, he said -- covered windows, tall fences, cars coming and going
late at night. "Sometimes the whine of fans," he said.

Those fans, of course, are eating electrical power, something that
also irks many.

"We're all trying to reduce our carbon footprint, but in these places
the meters are spinning off the wall," said Mayor Mark Wheetley of
Arcata. "When do you say, enough is enough?"