WITH L.A. AS SCARE STORY, CITIES BANNING POT CLINICS

As hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries have opened this year
in a startling rollout across California, unnerved local officials
have started to push back aggressively.

Many cities and a few counties have banned them. Others have imposed
emergency moratoriums. And some have started to sue dispensaries to
force them to close. So far, the state's courts have sided with local
officials.

For marijuana advocates, who have seen over-the-counter sales become
commonplace and watched the steady drift of California's vibrant weed
counterculture into the mainstream, these setbacks are a discordant
development.

"At this point, we're not winning a battle we should be winning,"
said Joe Elford, chief counsel for Americans for Safe Access, who
believes that local bans violate state law. "There's been this kind
of backlash of let's give ourselves this great enforcement tool of
just banning dispensaries."

Three years ago, Elford's organization found that 29 California
cities had banned dispensaries. Now, at least 120 have done so,
according to advocates and opponents of medical marijuana. That's a
quarter of the state's cities. In recent months, the pace appears to
have accelerated. The number of cities allowing dispensaries has
grown much more slowly, from two dozen to about 30.

Last week, Red Bluff, about 130 miles north of Sacramento, became the
latest city to vote for a ban, one that outlaws not only
dispensaries, but also collectives and marijuana cultivation. This
week, Nevada City, a postcard-perfect Gold Rush city in the Sierra
foothills, is likely to follow.

Los Angeles, the apogee of the uncontrolled dispensary boom, has
become the scare story that has driven many other cities to act. The
city attorney's office estimates that about 1,000 dispensaries have
opened, almost all of them in violation of a moratorium that was
adopted in 2007.

"We actually tell cities around the state to look at the failure in
Los Angeles," said Paul Chabot, the founder of the Coalition for a
Drug Free California. "That's why the cities are moving fast and
furious across the state to adopt bans."

This blow-back has come as local politicians look at the experiences
of other cities and decide that they don't much like what they see:
Anyone who wants to smoke pot can easily get a doctor's
recommendation; dispensaries can attract crime; and some operators
are in it for the money, although profits are prohibited.

Even places widely seen as pot-friendly have become wary.

Santa Cruz passed a law in 2000 to allow dispensaries. One opened in
2005, another in 2006, in the same industrial area. City officials
say they have not had any trouble with them.

But Mike Ferry, a Santa Cruz city planner, said he was inundated with
inquiries about opening dispensaries after the Obama administration
announced in March that federal agents would lay off stores that
adhered to state law.

"It goes from a trickle to a call a day, from all over the state and
even out of the state," he said.

The city studied its dispensaries and learned that about
three-quarters of their customers were not from Santa Cruz. The
prospect of being a regional marijuana hub did not excite city leaders.

"We kind of felt like we were going to end up with a concentration," he said.

City officials have recommended a cap at two.

Some towns that once welcomed dispensaries have switched off the
"Vacancy" sign. Dixon, a bedroom community on Interstate 80 between
the Bay Area and Sacramento, decided years ago to allow dispensaries.
None opened. Recently, several people who did not live in the city
inquired about starting one.

This was surprising to Jack Batchelor, the mayor. Why Dixon, a city
of about 17,500?

"My sense is that it would be people living outside Dixon and driving
by," Batchelor said.

Given the push-the-envelope innovation in California's marijuana
industry, Batchelor's fear that his city might host the first
drive-through dispensary doesn't seem far-fetched. It was not an
appealing prospect, he said.

The more Batchelor learned, the more he worried. On the web, he
realized how easy it was for anyone to get a doctor's recommendation
for marijuana. He read reports that dispensaries attract crime. And
he decided that he didn't believe that the aspiring dispensary
operators had approached Dixon out of compassion for its residents.

"It's a monetary issue," he said. "Here's a way to expand their business."

In August, Dixon's City Council banned the stores.

Other cities, including many in the Inland Empire and Orange County,
have similarly enacted outright bans.

Laguna Beach adopted a ban in September. Mayor Kelly Boyd said school
officials urged the city to prohibit dispensaries. "We saw what was
happening in other cities, and how they were rapidly growing and
opening, and we didn't want that happening in our city," he said.

At least eight of California's 58 counties now have bans.

Supervisors in Madera County, in the Central Valley, voted
unanimously in September to outlaw dispensaries after listening to
almost two dozen supporters. One after another, they pleaded to be
allowed to buy marijuana at the county's two dispensaries, telling
emotional stories of how it helped them deal with anxiety, glaucoma,
lupus, asthma, chronic pain and headaches. One man, who said he was a
veteran and suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome, said, "I
don't know why you are being backward about it."

But the board was swayed by the sheriff, who cited crime statistics,
insisted a vote for dispensaries would be a vote to violate federal
law, noted that county voters had rejected the 1996 medical marijuana
initiative and offered this opinion of dispensary operators: "They're
not compassionate caregivers, they're criminals."

Elford and other advocates for medical marijuana argue that it is the
bans that are illegal and insist that the California Supreme Court
will eventually invalidate them. "They can't pass ordinances that are
inimical to a matter of statewide concern," said Elford, who has
provided legal counsel on many of the state's medical marijuana cases.

Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown concluded last year that dispensaries run by
collectives "may be lawful," but did not address whether cities and
counties could outlaw them.

So far, cities have won several cases in state courts.

As cities wait to see whether an appeals court will uphold a ban
imposed by Anaheim, they have embraced another appellate court
ruling. The state 2nd District Court of Appeal recently ruled for
Claremont in its three-year battle with a dispensary that opened
after the city denied it a business license and permit. The panel
decided the state's medical marijuana laws did not stop the city from
enforcing its licensing and zoning requirements.

That approach -- using licensing and zoning rules to keep
dispensaries out of town -- is becoming increasingly popular with
cities. A Superior Court judge recently sided with Fresno and ordered
nine dispensaries to shut down. In the Bay Area, Walnut Creek has
issued daily $500 fines to a dispensary that officials say violates
its zoning rules and have filed suit. City Atty. Paul Valle-Riestra
estimates the total fine at about $15,000. "Clearly, there seems to
be a lot of money involved in this, and they don't seem to bat an eye
at those kind of penalties," he said.Lake Forest in Orange County has
seen many dispensaries open in strip malls near the junction of the 5
and 405 freeways. The city has sued 21 dispensaries; five have closed.

Red Bluff officials said the Claremont decision emboldened them to
push for their sweeping ban. As in Claremont, a dispensary opened in
Red Bluff without permission, triggering the City Council's action.
But city leaders also worried about crime and complaints of people
smoking pot at houses used as collectives.

"You can really just start seeing that there's a dark side to this,"
said Scott Timboe, the city's planning director, "and so it was
really the dark side that our community was concerned about."