CITY COUNCIL FAVORS MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARIES

Medical marijuana may soon be another product you can buy locally - if
you have a permit, that is.

At Wednesday's meeting, the Sonoma City Council took further steps
toward setting up a licensing system that would allow a medical
marijuana dispensary to open in Sonoma. The license would be a
one-year permit, renewable upon verification of compliance and
revocable at any moment if holder is non-compliant. Dispensaries could
not be located within 100 feet of single-family residences, schools
and parks. Growing or consuming marijuana on-site would be prohibited
and the city would have the authority to do a third-party audit.

The council voted 4-1 for the city staff to move forward, with
councilmember August Sebastiani against the measure.

Qualified patients can currently legally grow the plants within the
city, according to state law. However, many patients don't necessarily
have the know-how so many patients currently drive to Santa Rosa or
San Francisco for their prescriptions.

Sonoma resident Rosalee Jalo, who was diagnosed with lyme disease in
1992, asked council to make dispensaries available in the city. "I've
tried many medicines, all had side-affects," said Jalo. "I have to
drive 45 minutes when I'm feeling very ill. It's a great burden for
me."

John Sugg, who has operated a dispensary in Santa Rosa for the past
three years, said he had many customers driving from Sonoma. "There's
all this driving back and forth that could be prevented. It would be a
green solution," he said.

A local lawyer who served on the Sonoma County Task Force on the
Regulation of Medical Marijuana, vouched for the safety of the
facilities. "The largest dispensary north of San Francisco is located
in Santa Rosa. In three years, there was not a single call for law
enforcement around it. The oldest dispensary, operating for niine
years in Guerneville, just three occasions has law enforcement been
called, in contrast to a saloon down the street which averages 41
calls a year."

The council first took up the dispensary issue in 2007 and
subsequently voted 4-1 to develop a work project to allow medical
marijuana dispensaries to be established in Sonoma. California began
to allow the legal use of marijuana for medical uses in 1996 when
voters passed Prop 215. Locals can currently obtain medical marijuana
in Santa Rosa and Cotati.

City planner David Goodison said that the police chief and the city
prosecutor are against allowing dispensaries, concerned about the
potential abuse of the system and some safety issues that had been
occasionally reported in other communities such as DUIs and loitering.

August Sebastiani was the only councilmember in disagreement with
moving forward. "It is not a debate over the effectiveness of the
medicinal properties. My heart goes out to those folks for whom this
is their only alternative," said Sebastiani. "There are at the same
time recreational uses, and I worry that allowing medical marijuana
dispensaries sends a message to those recreational users that this
drug might be more available and less dangerous recreationally
speaking than it actually is. I certainly feel that way with my own
children."

The city staff will move ahead on defining the licensing process to be
brought before the council again at a later date.