REDDING APPROVES MEDICAL POT RULES

Redding will impose a 45-day moratorium on new medical marijuana
dispensaries and a host of regulations on current and future
businesses to halt a "green rush" of for-profit collectives.

The council voted 3-1 Tuesday evening to adopt the regulations after
listening to more than an hour of public testimony and directing
another hour of detailed questions to Police Chief Peter Hansen, who
would enforce the new law, and City Attorney Rick Duvernay, who
drafted the law.

Vice Mayor Patrick Jones cast the lone vote against the regulations,
arguing that federal law forbids marijuana possession and the new
rules would put the city in conflict with those laws. Mayor Rick
Bosetti was absent.

Redding hosts at least 20 medical marijuana dispensaries, with some
estimating up to 30. The city has received dozens of applications for
more.

The new regulations will require all medical marijuana co-ops and
collectives in the city to get permits to operate dispensaries
through the police chief. Dispensaries now in business would also
have to get permits.

The regulations will require criminal background checks for
dispensary operators, forbid selling medical marijuana for profit,
outlaw the consumption and cultivation of marijuana at the
dispensary, and ban tattooing and the sale of smoking pipes,
pornography and other material not related to medical marijuana at
the dispensaries.

The regulations will also set operating hours for dispensaries and
specify zoning that keeps these businesses at least 300 feet from
residential areas and 1,000 feet from a school, day care center,
recreation center, youth center, library or another medical
marijuana cooperative.

Dispensaries would have to renew their permits annually.

The council heard from nearly two dozen speakers, including business
owners in Mission Square on Bechelli Lane. That shopping center alone
is home to four medical marijuana dispensaries.

Patty Heinz, who owns Image West Framing Design in Mission Square,
said her business has suffered since a medical marijuana dispensary
opened next door two months ago.

"We have a common wall, we smell marijuana every day," Heinz said.
"Customers are not happy. There is chaos in the parking lot, people
hang out and smoke in the parking lot."

The council added language to the ordinance that would forbid
dispensaries in any building sharing a wall with another business.

Tina Hitchcock, another Mission Square business owner, said the city
is encouraging a drug scene that is ruining her business.

"I have worked six days a week for 35 years and I am being taken down
by a bunch of thugs," Hitchcock told the council.

Other speakers who defended the dispensaries and decried Hitchcock's
characterization of medical marijuana users as thugs still supported
the city's proposed regulations, saying something is needed to reign
in the "green rush."

"There has been a green rush because of profit," said Matt Smith of
Redding, who works in drug law enforcement but said he supports
medical marijuana. "There are over 20 collectives and only three
McDonald's in Redding. Dispensaries were allowed to open without
thorough review. We're not here to debate the use of marijuana, but
how many dispensaries do we need."

The council also voted 3-1 to direct the Planning Commission to
review new zoning that would set basic standards for indoor and
outdoor medical marijuana cultivation.

Qualified patients and caregivers may possess up to eight ounces of
dried marijuana and maintain no more than six mature plants, under
state law.