MOBILE DELIVERERS MAKE POT ENFORCEMENT HARDER

San Clemente has a ban on medical-marijuana dispensaries, but that
doesn't mean you can't get it there.

An increase in mobile medical-marijuana deliverers has added another
wrinkle to the already gray area surrounding the controversial issue
that pits state law against federal law. On top of that, tight staff
makes it tough for code enforcers to shut down banned dispensaries,
many of which operate in secret.

San Clemente code enforcers are looking into shutting down five
dispensaries they think are operating in the city, some of them
mobile. The problem is they don't know where they are. The city has
shut down two dispensaries so far and on Thursday cited one that had
opened only a few days earlier.

Brent Panas, a code-enforcement official, said his department can't
crack down on deliverers unless they catch them in the act, which is
hard to do for a staff of two. Just like any other business that wants
to operate in the city, mobile dispensaries need a business license.
But if they applied for one, they wouldn't get it because of a 2006
law.

San Clemente isn't the only Orange County city that could be
experiencing this problem.

California voters in 1996 passed a law allowing those with medical
need to use marijuana, provided they have a card showing they've been
recommended the treatment by a doctor. But federal law disagrees, and
Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach, Garden Grove and Aliso Viejo are just
some of the Orange County cities that ban marijuana
collectives.

Dana Point does not specifically ban medical-marijuana dispensaries
but has been involved in a court fight over its attempt to investigate
whether five dispensaries in the city are operating legally. Lake
Forest sued medical-marijuana dispensary owners and retail landowners
who rented space to them, saying dispensaries are not permitted under
municipal code.

Yet, mobile services often deliver to cities that do not permit
dispensaries. That's the case with Pacific Coast Deliveries, a
dispensary that says it delivers to residents from Huntington Beach to
San Clemente. West Coast THC says it makes same-day deliveries
throughout Orange County. Coast Co-operative also delivers countywide.

Panas said he has been trying to find a mobile dispensary that he
tracked to a San Clemente residence, but he can't seem to catch the
operation in the act. He is working with the city attorney to explore
ways to fix the problem.

"We're code enforcement, not police. We're not going to sit outside
and do a stakeout in front of a home," Panas said.

Increase in Deliverers

The spike in deliverers started to pick up in Orange County after
dispensary raids took place in Lake Forest in the fall, said Bryan
Jordan, executive director of Our Cannabis World, a medical-marijuana
magazine formerly known as OCWeedly. The same thing happened in San
Diego after raids there.

Delivery services have been around for as long as there have been
medical-marijuana dispensaries, said Kris Hermes, spokesman for
Americans for Safe Access, an advocacy group.

"Where they tend to dominate is where local government is hostile to
medical marijuana," he said.

Jordan said he expects more deliverers to take root in Orange County
as more area cities ban dispensaries. But that's going to make it
tougher to police marijuana sales to make sure they are legitimate, he
said.

"Cannabis Planet," a weekly 30-minute TV show focused on
medical-marijuana education, has featured an increasing number of
deliverers advertising on the show, which first aired in July on KJLA,
said creator Brad Lane.

"The way it should really work is that dispensaries should have
delivery as an extension to its services. Some people are operating
their delivery services the right way by delivering to the sick and
ill, to the people who don't have transportation," Jordan said.

Jacek Lentz, a lawyer with medical-marijuana expertise, said
municipalities have wide authority to regulate businesses, but several
city bans do not specifically define the difference between mobile and
storefront dispensaries, and that's where it gets tricky.

"A potential counterargument that no one has made yet and I may argue
in the future is that these are not real businesses. They are
collectives and cooperatives that deliver medical marijuana within
themselves," Lentz said.

A problem, though, is that dispensaries pay sales taxes, making it
difficult to deny their business standing.

"To what extent cities regulate and ban (dispensaries), that's the
cutting edge right now," Lentz said. "Some may even move more activity
underground."

Latest San Clemente Dispensary

As code enforcers in San Clemente try to figure out what to do about
mobile dispensaries, a brick-and-mortar operation is gearing up to
fight City Hall.

Larry Schmidt opened Justified Alternative Healing Medicine on Sunday
at 1450 N. El Camino Real. Days later, he faced a $100 fine and a
cease-and-desist order.

Though the municipal code does not allow dispensaries, Schmidt says
that when he went to the planning department a year and a half ago,
officials told him there was a gray area when it came to medical marijuana.

But dispensaries have been banned in San Clemente since 2006, and City
Planner Jim Pechous said staff would never describe the issue as a
gray area.

Schmidt said the city is "putting me in the same category as a strip
club or a porn shop, but this is a place where patients go to get
their medicine that's prescribed by their own doctor." He added that
he has put all his savings into his dispensary and plans to donate
money to local schools.

But Pechous said: "Let's be real here. You have to look at the use of
your business and know that kind of use could be an issue. If you're
going to open a business in any town, you'd make clearly sure what
wasn't allowed."

Schmidt plans to take his case to the Feb. 2 City Council meeting. His
big worry, though, is the zoning-amendment process. To change a zoning
law, one must apply, make a $10,000 deposit with the planning
department and possibly still be denied.

Breaking Ground

No one has tried to amend the San Clemente zoning law to permit
dispensaries, Panas said. "Someone has to break ground in order to get
them to be allowed," he said.

Amendments could include relegating dispensaries to a certain part of
town or clearly disallowing mobile units.

Some medical-marijuana dispensaries have gotten business licenses from
the city in the past, but that's because they weren't honest about
what they were selling, Panas said. They didn't disclose on the
license application that they would be selling marijuana; they would
just write "holistic medicine." Panas said all the false shops he
knows of have been closed.

To get better training on how to deal with dispensary crackdowns, the
code-enforcement staff plans to attend a seminar in Escondido in February.