POT STORE COMING TO YUBA COUNTY

Yucca County will get its first medical marijuana store within the
next week, with a Yucca City man in the final stages of opening a
cooperative dispensary in a Linda strip mall.

Marysville Healing Center, as owner Chander Sidher plans to call it,
will have a small retail store in the front and a secured area in the
back where medical marijuana cardholders will be able to buy
different varieties of pot for smoking as well as in edible and balm forms.

"I really believe in this," said Sidher, 50, whose store will be at
1600 North Beale Road. "I don't think we need to charge people $200
to go to doctor's offices and get pills for pain."

Sidher, who said he has all necessary permits for the store, said he
got interested in medical marijuana because of his own arthritis from
years as a contractor and his son's experience with lingering pain
from a car accident.

His son's doctor prescribed him vicodin, a powerful drug with some
narcotic qualities that made his son unable to work. Sidher said he
feels compared to that, medical marijuana is safer and smarter.

The store, about 1,700 square feet, will open early next week, Sidher said.

But even though the dispensary's shelving and displays are not yet
complete, the word is already out. A Yucca County man who did not
want to be identified came into the store this week in search of a
prescription, and said he'd read a newspaper ad that tipped him off
to the store.

Sidher said he's affiliated with a marijuana collective in Sacramento
with as many as 25 percent of its patients traveling from Butte,
Yucca and Sutter counties.

Ben van dear Meter is a staff writer with the Appeal-Democrat in Marysville.