NEW POT REGS RAISE QUESTIONS

Supervisors have approved a new version of County Code 9.31, which
allows cultivation of up to 99 plants per parcel for medical
marijuana-growing cooperatives, members of those cooperatives, and
qualifying patients with a doctor's recommendation.

But passage of the ordinance has raised questions about whether the
county oridnance contradicts the will of the people as expressed by
Measure B, approved by voters in June 2008. Measure B limits pot
possession to six mature, 12 immature plants and 8 ounces of
processed pot per person.

Views on the new version of the ordinance, and the problems
associated with it, depend on to whom you're talking.

Sheriff Tom Allman, for instance, says he is concerned about the
additional work being laid upon his department.

"They want me to take this additional responsibility, but they aren't
giving me additional money," Allman said. "Instead, they are asking
for layoffs. At this point, I am ready to ask the board of
supervisors what they want me to stop doing so I can do this.

"I need them to fund one additional full-time person for six months
out of the year. This person would do the in-office administrative
paperwork, would sell the zip-ties, and interact with the people who
are going to be doing third-party inspections. This person also would
assist with a limited number of field inspections."

"I would also like the board to limit the number of cooperatives we
have in this county, at least for the first year," Allman added. "
Ideally, I'd like it kept to three-to-five cooperatives per
supervisorial district until we can get a handle on this."

Ukiah attorney Matt Finnegan, who is running district attorney,
doesn't feel the revised ordinance violates of Measure B. "It's still
25 plants per parcel, plus 99 plants if you are a registered
cooperative under the attorney general's guidelines," he said.

"Measure B cannot be the law because of the Kelly case. Kelly says
the plant limits as set forth in Senate Bill 420 are illegal, because
it changed what an initiative did. Only an initiative can change an
initiative," Finnegan noted. "So the Kelly decision said the
authority for the state government to limit the number of plants you
can grow is invalid.

"But I don't think Kelly invalidates 9.31, because 9.31 regulates
plant numbers under the nuisance code, that is under local
government's ability to regulate and abate nuisances.

"My personal opinion is the district attorney's office needs to take
the lead on how marijuana is going to be dealt with, because the
board of supervisors isn't in the law enforcement business," Finnegan said.

Myron Sawicki, assistant district attorney under former D.A. Norman
Vroman, agreed that "Measure B is defunct."

But Sawicki was more circumspect when asked if 9.31 was consonant
with the Kelly case. "The law concerning marijuana is in such a flux
no one can state an opinion on that with any degree of certainty," he
said. "What Kelly said is you cannot set arbitrary limits. Kelly and
The People Versus Mauer are saying, it is to be decided on a
case-by-case basis."

Sawicki argued the right to grow marijuana is protected under the
California constitution. He noted the state constitution goes further
than the federal constitution is asserting the rights of the people,
adding "Article One, Section One of the Constitution of the State of
California guarantees every Californian the right to health."

Proposition 215, which allowed people to grow marijuana as medicine,
was approved by the people, Sawicki said. To him that vote menat
marijuana was legally a medicine and therefore the right to grow it
was guaranteed under the state constitution.

"If a person has a right, under the California constitution to
protect their health, then the answer to the question [whether 9.31
violates Kelly] involves simple arithmetic," Sawicki said. "Whether
right or wrong, the people of this state passed Proposition 215, so
they have the right to get well when they are sick."

Ukiah businessman Ross Liberty, one of the chief proponents of
Measure B, had a different opinion.

"I don't think it's a violation of Measure B. It might be a violation
of the voters' intent when they passed Measure B," Liberty said.

Speaking of the supervisors' new version of 9.31, Liberty recalled a
marijuana case involving 1960s counterculture icon and LSD messiah
Timothy Leary, busted and tried in Texas when he declined to purchase
a state permit to possess marijuana.

According to Liberty, Leary argued he declined to purchase a permit
in Texas because doing so would provide a record that Leary had
willfully and with foreknowledge broken a federal law against growing
marijuana. Purchasing a permit to do so was in effect incriminating
himself, and therefore a violation of the Fifth Amendment to the US
Constitution.

Leary won the case.

Speaking of the board's new 9.31 regulations, Liberty said, "I don't
think it's gonna hold up."

Liberty said he saw the handwriting on the wall in his struggle
against the marijuana culture, but added when marijuana advocates win
that war doing so will have a devastating impact on the local economy.

"Maybe in six months, maybe in November, but certainly, in five
years, all of this is going to be moot," Liberty said. "We will be
looking at legal marijuana, and that means we will be looking at $5 a
pound pot.

"We need to find something we can do, something we can be, that is
not dependent on the pot economy, because this community is not
well-suited to facing a world of $5 a pound pot."