WHERE'S THE URGENCY FOR CO-OP MORATORIUM? ON MAIN STREET

Open marijuana co-ops are here to stay - and local zoning should keep
up with them.

There's the law, and then there's what's happening on Main
Street.

And two Shasta County supervisors couldn't seem to tell the difference
Tuesday when they wondered what was so urgent about a proposed 45-day
moratorium on new medical-marijuana cooperatives. The legal pause to
review zoning issues related to the co-ops needed four votes to pass,
but Leonard Moty and David Kehoe said they didn't see the point in
responding now to a law that the voters passed more than a decade ago,
so the moratorium died.

It's true that Proposition 215, legalizing the medicinal use of
marijuana, passed in 1996. It was only this year, however, that the
Obama administration stated it would not use federal resources to
pursue anyone in compliance with the various states' medical-marijuana
laws. That legal blessing led to a rush of new storefront
dispensaries, in prominent locales including next door to the Cascade
Theatre in Redding and on Main Street in Cottonwood. Altogether, at
least a dozen brand-new dispensaries have opened this summer around
the county.

But without explicit zoning rules to steer the co-ops toward suitable
neighborhoods and to ensure they operate in a community-friendly way,
the result is an anything-goes atmosphere.

Paradoxically, the Humboldt County city of Arcata - a spot famously
tolerant of marijuana - last year passed tight zoning ordinances that
govern where dispensaries can open, where and how plants can be grown,
and how co-ops must be run. The rules include local oversight of
operations to at least try to prevent the spread of medical marijuana
into the illicit market, as well as a cap on the number of
dispensaries in the city. Maybe they know something about where this
is all leading.

Critics knocked the moratorium as a mere stalling tactic, but it would
have made sense to stall long enough to set reasonable rules before -
rather than after - the nearly inevitable public backlash.

One way or another, these shops are here to stay. And as long as
they're following the law, they're welcome. That doesn't mean,
however, that neighbors' quality of life should go up in smoke.