Pubdate: Tue, 11 Oct 2011 Source: Record Searchlight (Redding, CA) Copyright: 2011 Record Searchlight Contact: http://www.redding.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/360 Author: Alayna Shulman SHASTA COUNTY PLANNERS TO CONSIDER MEDICAL POT ISSUES Dispensary Ban, Ordinances to Be Discussed In the first local discussion after recent federal crackdowns on medical cannabis in California, Shasta County planning commissioners will consider recommending county supervisors ban dispensaries and update regulations on cultivation in unincorporated parts of the county at Thursday's meeting. The recommendation from the county Resource Management Department comes after a series of moratoria first enacted by county supervisors in early 2010 on medical marijuana collectives in the county. Establishing dispensaries has been illegal in unincorporated areas since, although the city of Redding currently has 16 collectives. Federal strikes against medical marijuana dispensaries in California have upset medical marijuana proponents in the past week after letters were sent to dozens of collectives statewide, alleging they're "pervasive, for-profit" operations and demanding they shut down in less than two months. But the timing of the county's medical marijuana review is only a coincidence, said Shasta County's assistant resource management director, Rick Simon. Planners have been studying the effects of dispensaries in the area since the initial moratorium was enacted. "This stuff that (federal prosecutors) are doing now is really kind of an interesting timing, but it is coincidental," he said. Planning commissioners Thursday will decide whether to recommend supervisors adopt two ordinances, one banning collectives indefinitely and one setting guidelines for growing medical cannabis in the unincorporated county. In a report to planning commissioners, the Resource Management Department identifies several key "issues" regarding dispensaries that staff members have observed in talking with other jurisdictions and local law enforcement. They include increased violence and crime, poor environmental conditions and living conditions near grows, complaints regarding smell and resulting difficulty breathing, loitering, illegal drug sales and noise. But Phillip Stone, 21, an employee at the River Valley Collective in Redding, said traveling all the way into town is taxing for many of the collective's customers who live in more rural areas. "It's a huge burden on them, no doubt," he said. Stone said he doesn't think complaints that marijuana dispensaries smell are serious enough to forbid them altogether. "So does getting your lawn cut. Having the trash people come through is smelly," he said. Still, there also are a number of recent legal cases "which make clear the authority of local jurisdictions to regulate medical marijuana dispensaries and cultivation," the staff report reads, including Assembly Bill 1300, which will take effect in January and says the Medical Marijuana Program Act won't prevent local government from adopting ordinances regulating the location or establishment of collectives. In addition, the new ordinances wouldn't completely ban county residents from growing marijuana at their homes. The ordinance would let "qualified patients and primary caregivers" grow on their property as long as the crops are no more than 200 square feet, depending on parcel size. Indoor grows, on the other hand, can't be bigger than 100 square feet. There would also be a 1,000-foot "no-grow" zone around schools and "sensitive" places. "We believe that strikes a reasonable balance between meeting the needs of those patients that do require medical marijuana while protecting the integrity of neighborhoods, the safety of neighborhoods and concerns of neighboring property owners," Simon said. "Our intent is to try to accommodate kind of a personal scale allowance for cultivation and avoid or strongly discourage any large-scale cultivation operations, where, in our view, a lot of the problems occur." - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart