SEBASTOPOL WEIGHING MEDICAL POT NURSERIES

Dispensary director wants growers 'out of shadows,' but police chief
has 'grave concerns' over safety

Sebastopol officials are considering regulation of "medical cannabis
nurseries," a proposal that one advocate says would bring marijuana
cultivation for ill people "out of the shadows."

But the police chief has voiced "grave concerns" that such an
operation would attract armed thieves.

While there are no specific proposals, city officials said advocates
have proposed nurseries growing thousands of plants and creating 30 to
40 jobs. One suggestion was to use an old apple-packing warehouse near
the Laguna de Santa Rosa.

Police Chief Jeff Weaver said he worries for the safety of the public,
his police officers and those tending the marijuana should thieves
learn the location of the plants.

"They do steal it," Weaver said. "They steal it at
gunpoint."

But Robert Jacob, executive director of a nonprofit group that runs
the town's medical marijuana dispensary, said city regulations could
ease concerns and help the growers "come out of the shadows and into
the light."

Such an operation could pay wages to patient-gardeners and provide
them health care benefits. Also, it could include what Jacob has
described as "state-of-the art security and product tracking."

"The point is that it makes it much safer," said Jacob, who heads
Sebastopol's Peace in Medicine Healing Center. He has worked with
former Sebastopol Mayor Craig Litwin to propose language for a draft
law.

Two city council members, Linda Kelley and Guy Wilson, met Thursday
with the city attorney to discuss a possible nursery ordinance.

The council voted Tuesday to continue a moratorium instituted last
month that prohibits some cannabis nurseries while allowing patients
with a doctors' recommendation to keep growing their own plants.

City officials said the moratorium was needed because Jacob had
expressed interest in encouraging such nurseries, including his
written suggestion that such an operation could "bring in an estimated
30-40 industrial jobs to the area."

"We believe that the moratorium clearly applies to that described
operation," said City Attorney Larry McLaughlin. Other officials said
they were hearing proposals to house a nursey in a former apple
packing warehouse on Morris Street, although Jacob characterized that
as merely one possibility.

When California voters approved Proposition 215 in 1996, they provided
certain patients and their primary caregivers an exemption from state
criminal liability for the possession and cultivation of marijuana.
However, such patients still can run afoul of federal law.

In the case of a marijuan nursery, state law requires that the
gardeners at such an operation would have to be cannabis patients or
their "primary caregivers." And the nursery's landowner would run a
risk that federal agents might permanently seize the property for
violating U.S. drug laws.

Americans for Safe Access, an Oakland-based advocacy group, estimates
300,000 Californians may be using marijuana for medical purposes. Some
grow their own under state rules that allow each patient to possess no
more than 6 mature or 12 immature plants. Sonoma County's guidelines
allow up to 30 plants a patient.

Other patients acquire cannabis at one of the more than 500
dispensaries that the group estimates operate around the state.

State law forbids for-profit operations in either the selling or
distribution of medical pot. Instead, any plants are to be grown by
patients or caregivers and any exchanges of the drug are to be tied to
non-profit collectives or cooperatives of patients.

Further, courts don't allow someone to become a primary caregiver
simply by supplying patients with pot. Last month the state's 4th
District Court of Appeal ruled against a dispensary owner in Palm
Desert who argued that he was caregiver to those who came to his
office. A spokesman for the Riverside County District Attorney's
Office said prosecutors will pursue charges against Stacy Robert
Hochanadel for operating a business that sells marijuana.

Kris Hermes, a spokesman with Americans for Safe Access, acknowledged
cultivation is "probably the one largest gray area" for medical marijuana.

Wilson said he wants to understand what can be done within the law
that also would enjoy community support.

"It's a complex subject, legally complex," Wilson said. "I'm a lawyer
and I don't pretend to understand it fully."