SUPERVISORS TACKLE RED-HOT MEDI-POT ISSUE

Commit County To Coming Up With An Ordinance Regulating Dispensaries

Until now, Butte County has kept a low profile on the controversial
issue of medical-marijuana dispensaries, watching as other counties
and many cities have tried to muddle through what has turned out to be
a swamp of vague and often conflicting legalities. That ended Tuesday
(Jan. 12), when the Board of Supervisors jumped into the fray with
both feet.

The board's immediate action was to impose a temporary moratorium on
dispensaries in the county, but that wasn't as significant as it might
have appeared. As Supervisor Jane Dolan eventually pointed out,
dispensaries already are illegal simply because they aren't a
permitted use under the county's zoning ordinance.

What's significant about the moratorium in the long term, however, is
that it commits the county to coming up with an ordinance either
zoning for and regulating dispensaries or prohibiting them altogether.
And, as elected officials elsewhere have discovered, as much as they
would like to ban dispensaries outright, it's difficult to do so.

The county will have about two years to come up with an ordinance. The
temporary moratorium is for only 45 days, explained County Counsel
Bruce Alpert, but it can be extended for an additional 22 months.

In the meantime, it's unclear what will happen to the existing
medical-marijuana purveyors in the county. Sheriff J.W. Smith was
terse and blunt when he told the supervisors the law was very clear
that dispensaries are illegal and that he was "obligated to enforce
the law." District Attorney Mike Ramsey agreed with Smith.

It was obvious that Smith and Ramsey were opposed to having
dispensaries in the county, preferring to limit medical-marijuana
production to backyard grows and similar small-scale operations. But
several speakers pointed out what they saw as the shortcomings of that
position.

They argued that, when voters passed Proposition 215, the
Compassionate Use Act of 1996, they intended for people to be able to
obtain medical marijuana if they needed it. The lack of dispensaries
selling it to qualified buyers makes it difficult to obtain, they said.

Richard Tognali, who operates SOS (Script Only Service) in Chico,
which he defines as a collective but advertises in local papers,
pointed out that growing pot takes time and effort that some patients
simply don't have. "Some of them will die before they get any relief,"
he insisted.

If patients can't get their "medicine" locally, they'll either have to
go to other cities to get it or go underground. "Making this more
criminal makes no sense," he said.

Several speakers disagreed with Ramsey's insistence that dispensaries
are illegal, citing Attorney General Jerry Brown's guidelines that
allow sales by nonprofit groups. A man named Hoke Murray, of Oroville,
said he was a member of High Sierra NORML and offered to help develop
workable guidelines. He explained to a puzzled Supervisor Kim
Yamaguchi that NORML stood for the National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Ken Prather, a founder of the THC collective in Corning, pointed out
that his group was an incorporated nonprofit, had workers'
compensation insurance, and paid taxes. Dispensaries, he said, "are
supposed to remove the illegality so people can obtain their
medication" without having to go to the street, where they're in
danger of getting ripped off or beaten up, he stated.

Referring to the disagreement over whether dispensaries were legal,
Alpert noted that several court cases addressing that very issue were
in process and that "the courts have not yet spoken definitively" on
the legal issues brought up during the hearing. "They probably will do
so during the period of the moratorium," he added. "[That period is]
to allow you an opportunity to study the issue."

Following the public hearing, Dolan noted that dispensaries were
already illegal and reiterated that "the moratorium will require us to
come up with some rules" and that county staff would be working to do
so. She urged people to contact Alpert's office if they wanted to
participate in the process.