Anderson council to consider 90-day moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries or collectives

At their July 21 regular meeting, set to begin at 7 p.m., Anderson’s city council members are scheduled to hold a public hearing and consider an urgency ordinance that would “prohibit the establishment of medical marijuana dispensaries, collectives and cooperatives” anywhere in city limits for a period of 90 days.

Urgency ordinances require a 4/5 majority vote to pass.

The measure appears to be directly related to a May 26 request by Shasta County resident Gina Munday, who had asked the council to allow her to open such a business.

However, a zoning amendment for a specific location has never been submitted by Munday, so the matter remains unresolved.

City Planning Director John Stokes previously presented to the council an opinion from Anderson City Attorney Mike Fitzpatrick that responds to the question whether the city should amend its zoning ordinance to allow locations for medical marijuana collectives or cooperatives to operate.

“No, because California law does not allow cities to pass ordinances in violation of federal law,” Fitzpatrick writes in his opinion dated May 27.

“Since distribution of marijuana violates federal law, whether in a dispensary, cooperative or collective, passing a zoning ordinance . . . would still be in violation of the laws of the United States and, therefore, prohibited,” Fitzpatrick’s statement further quotes from a recent memo from the law firm of Jones and Mayer.

The quandary for Munday and others who have obtained from their doctors a recommendation for medical marijuana is that California state law, since Proposition 215 was passed in 1996 and signed into law, allows those with legal and current recommendations to possess for personal use a small number of growing or mature cannabis plants and a small amount – up to eight ounces in most of the state – of processed marijuana in various forms.

California is one of eight states in the nation – including Arizona, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Hawaii and Maine -- to pass such a law, but it is the only state so far to allow the establishment of cooperatives and collectives where the marijuana plants can be legally cultivated and grown as well as the opening of dispensaries where those with the proper credentials and doctor’s recommendation can legally obtain the otherwise controlled substance.

In May of 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state and federal laws do not need to conform with each other, leaving patients and communities such as Anderson in legal limbo, states a Web site maintained by proponents of Proposition 215.