CITY DELAYS MEDICAL MARIJUANA DECISION

City Regulation Will Wait Six Months

Fearing potential lawsuits, the City of Hillsdale Planning Commission
decided Tuesday night to recommend a six-month extension of the
moratorium on medical marijuana regulations.

This is the second time that the city has pressed pause on medical
marijuana. The original six-month moratorium expires on April 5, the
day after the city council's next scheduled meeting, where they will
vote on the new moratorium.

Many municipalities in Michigan have faced lawsuits, including one
filed by American Civil Liberties Union, from disgruntled patients
alleging that cities were attempting to regulate medical marijuana
out of their limits. Plaintiffs said the cities enacted ordinances
that essentially ban the growth or usage of medical marijuana in
their communities, contrary to the 2008 state law that allowed
licensed medical marijuana usage.

"The No. 1 issue is interpretation of the act," Planning Committee
Chairman Brian Watkins said. "The main problem is that the
legislation is poorly crafted. The whole thing is incredibly vague."

The Planning Commission's responsibility, according to Debra
Sikorski, assessor and planning and zoning administrator, is to cite
the location of different types of uses for medical marijuana,
clarifying the state law for the city specifically.

"According to statute, there's a primary caregiver and a primary
patient and a dispensary, and it's up to the commission to determine
where those would be located and where they should be, what would be
the least disturbing to other people," she said.

The commission is attempting to deter the opening of what they
consider distasteful businesses in protected areas.

"It'd be like me trying to open up a Percocet store," Watkins said.
"A lot of municipalities have legitimate businesses where growers are
a part of the community and care about their area, but others seem to
take it as a 'Ha ha look what we can do legally now' with pot-leaf
signs everywhere. We don't want it to change the look or the feel of the area."

The city is mulling over several regulatory options, many modeled
after attempts at regulation by other municipalities in the state.
One such model follows the city of Grand Rapids, which uses a
residential system allowing for caregivers and qualifying patients to
operate out of their homes but disallows dispensaries, signs, co-ops
and collectives, or commercial zoning for medical-marijuana-related
businesses like head shops. After an inspection, a caregiver can sell
to two patients a day and five a week out of their home.

This plan would consider and regulate marijuana-related businesses
similarly to adult entertainment, an industry that is considered
legal but not viewed "as a mainstream thing," according to Watkins.

"The community doesn't want it willy-nilly anywhere," Watkins said.
"Zoning for dispensaries similar to adult entertainment would mean
restricting it from residential areas, and restricting it from the
vicinity of schools and churches."

According to members of the Planning Commission, this system allows
for community accountability and would keep the marijuana out of downtown.

"Even then [with the Grand Rapids plan], you would still have five
people coming and going from this house for a business transaction,"
Sikorski said. "It's probably the most debated issue we've dealt with."

As a result, the commission is carefully considering all of the
options, including dividing the city into specific districts where
people can grow and sell.

Growers and patients are licensed by the state, not the city.
Christopher Gutowski, director of public safety said he is also
waiting to see how lawsuits in other municipalities worked out before
deciding whether the city should expand on the state's licensing procedures.

"We haven't run across any situations with someone with a legal card
- - people who are licensed - involved in crime or driving under the
influence," he said.

Once the lawsuits are decided, he said, the Commission of Public
Safety would have to make a determination about how to identify legal
growers and patients.

"We don't know who's card carrying and who's not. We don't have
exposure to that so we don't know if it's a good card or not, even if
we inquired," he said.

All this ambiguity stems from the legislation passed in 2008 by
Michigan voters. The law allows physicians to approve the use of
marijuana for registered patients with "debilitating" medical
conditions including HIV, multiple sclerosis and other approved
conditions. The state permits registered caregivers to grow 12 plants
per patient. Rather than growing for themselves, patients can request
a primary caregiver to grow for them and up to five other patients.

Watkins said the Planning Commission would continue to work on the
subject, and request a lot of community input in the next six months.

"We will continue working; we don't want to sit on our hands. We want
to make sure we protect property rights but control what happens in
an expected way," he said. "The next meeting we're dedicating 90
percent of it to medical marijuana."