The Green Heart, a medical marijuana collective, opened Sunday in Anderson

Photo by George L. Winship, Editor

Gina Munday opened The Green Heart, a medical marijuana collective dispensary, at 10 a.m. Sunday, July 19, just two days and 9 hours before the Anderson City Council was scheduled to consider a 90-day moratorium on such establishments. By noon, Munday said she had already seen three clients.

At 10 a.m. Sunday, July 19, Gina Munday opened The Green Heart, a medical marijuana collective and dispensary at 3056 West Center St. in Anderson. It is the city’s first.

The store opening, which had been planned for later in the week, was pushed up to Sunday shortly after the Anderson City Council’s agenda was posted online Friday, July 17, announcing that the council would consider at its Tuesday, July 21, meeting an urgency ordinance declaring a 90-day moratorium on just such businesses.

“My attorney, Eric Berg of Redding, advised me to open prior to the council taking any action on the moratorium,” Munday said between signing up members for her non-profit collective.

“I’ve had three customers come in to see the dispensary between opening and noon,” commented Munday as she helped yet another potential collective member fill out the necessary paperwork.

Visitors to Munday’s collective must first show personal identification as well as a bonafide doctor’s recommendation for medical marijuana before they are even allowed to sign up as a member of the collective.

Munday or one of her employees then verifies the doctor’s recommendation as current, since such recommendations are typically good for only 12 months from the date of issuance.

A $10 membership processing fee is then assessed from each collective member prior to issuing the member a laminated collective ID card.

Only after the recommendation is confirmed by the same doctor who signed it can the collective member be ushered into a second, locked room, where the “medicine” is dispensed for a fee equal to the collective’s cost of cultivating and harvesting the plant material.

By law, the non-profit collective can only charge for the cost of any plant seeds, potting soil, fertilizers, water and artificial light used in the growing process, as well as a reasonable harvest and preparation charge, Munday explained.

Munday said she has tried since late January to obtain the proper City of Anderson permits to open her dream dispensary, a first-class operation that is safe, sanitary and secure.

“I first approached the city’s Planning Director, John Stokes, six months ago. After researching the zoning issues, I and my attorney determined that this is a medical office just like any other medical office. Therefore, there are no zoning issues that should apply,” said Munday.

Stokes, meanwhile, has taken the approach that unless a zoning ordinance specifically allows such a use, then it is prohibited. “I don’t have a zoned district that would accommodate her (dispensary),” Stokes told the Valley Post on June 2.

During a May 12 appearance before the Anderson City Council, Munday requested information as to what process she had to follow in order to open the business. She repeated her request on May 26, and followed up June 3 with a letter to Michael Fitzpatrick, the city’s legal counsel, asking to know “which City ordinances would prevent this type of operation.”

Munday cited California State Law SB 420 as well as Proposition 215 that in 1996 legalized personal possession and use of small amounts of marijuana and its derivative products by persons who had legally obtained a doctor’s recommendation for use of the cannabis plant, particularly THC, the psychoactive substance found in the buds of female plants.

On May 27, one day after Munday had made her second appearance before the council, Fitzpatrick issued an opinion that stated, in part, that Anderson should not amend its zoning ordinances to allow locations for medical marijuana collectives or cooperatives “because California law does not allow cities to pass ordinances in violation of federal law.”

A growing number of California cities, many inundated with requests to allow additional collectives, cooperatives and dispensaries for medical marijuana, have recently passed or are considering moratoriums since President Barack Obama indicated federal authorities would no longer actively prosecute operators of such non-profit organizations in California.

In Los Angeles, where a similar moratorium went into place in 2007, city officials saw the number of medical marijuana dispensaries triple to nearly 600 by June 1, 2009, reported John Hoeffel of the Los Angeles Times.

The Santa Cruz City Council approved a 45-day moratium June 23 on new medical marijuana dispensaries in that city’s limits “because they claimed there was a flood of daily inquiries to the city’s Planning Department about opening” such centers, states a story published by The Santa Cruz Sentinal.

Meanwhile, Redding has seen a doubling of medical marijuana dispensaries since December – from four to eight – if a listing of such businesses posted online by the Northern California Cannabis Club Directory is to be believed.

The Web site claims to be “a current list of all known medical marijuana dispensaries located in Humboldt, Del Norte, Modoc, Trinity, Shasta, Lassen, Tehama, Plumas, Glenn and Butte counties.”