CITY PLACES TEMPORARY BAN ON POT DISPENSARIES

SAN DIMAS - San Dimas joined the ranks of other San Gabriel Valley
cities last week and placed a temporary ban on medical marijuana
dispensaries.

The moratorium was spurred by a request to open a pot dispensary at
1173 Dixie Drive in northwest San Dimas.

An organization called Helping Hands Collective Caregivers asked for a
business license for the marijuana collective in March, said Dan
Coleman, the director of development services in the Planning Department.

"Because our zoning code doesn't list that as an allowable use, we
couldn't approve it," Coleman said.

Helping Hands then asked the City Council for an amendment to the
city's code, Coleman said.

Instead, the council voted last week to temporarily ban the
dispensaries while Planning Department employees study whether they
must allow dispensaries into the city, and if so, what conditions they
can and should impose, Coleman said. The dispensaries are permitted
under state law, but not federal law.

The dispensaries are already permanently banned in several cities,
including Azusa, Covina, Pasadena and Walnut. Los Angeles County,
Whittier and Diamond Bar are among the few municipalities that allow
them. Advertisement Many other cities have moratoriums.

"San Dimas is going to ban it like everyone else, and they don't want
to be up front about it, so they're going to pretend to think about
it," said Helping Hands' Shawn Tizabi. Tizabi also applied to open a
dispensary in Fontana, where the group has encountered the same reaction.

Councilman John Ebiner said it would be important to have an ordinance
that specifically governed medical marijuana dispensaries, rather than
trying to group the businesses in the same category as pharmacies or
retail stores.

"It's not a pharmacy or a doctor's office, it's not hubcaps or
flowers," Ebiner said. "And there's other things, like, 'Should there
be any kind of distance between this kind of use and a residential
neighborhood?' Whereas a pharmacy or some other use that might seem
similar wouldn't need that distance."

The moratorium in San Dimas will remain in place for 45 days. The
council is scheduled to vote May 22 on whether to extend the
moratorium 10 more months.