That would bring the number of counties to have enacted a moratorium to seven out of California’s 58. Eight counties now have outright bans. A moratorium will keep dispensaries from settling in the area while county staff mulls its legal options to regulate and restrict such facilities — or ban them altogether. It was the regulation — or lack thereof — of marijuana dispensaries that prompted supervisors Janet Wolf and Joni Gray, who was absent at the last meeting because of a cold, to bring the matter to the board’s attention.
Under county land-use standards, people can open a dispensary without the need for a permit if their property is already zoned for retail use, unless significant changes to the inside of the building are proposed, explained Diane Black of the county Planning and Development department. Dispensaries that go through the county’s land-use permit process face few restrictions, aside from ensuring adequate parking, on how they operate.
But concerns go beyond weak restrictions. In an interview Monday, Wolf said: “Increasingly, I have heard from community members, representatives of the education and recovery communities and others that, in fact, these operations can and do pose some challenges to public health and safety.” The supervisor stressed her focus was on the regulation of medical marijuana dispensaries and not on the use of the substance granted under the voter-approved Proposition 215, otherwise known as the Compassionate Use Act, which allows seriously ill Californians the right to obtain marijuana for medicinal purposes when it is recommended by their physician.
Inquiries being made
Three marijuana dispensaries have set up shop in the unincorporated county, and three more almost planted roots in Old Town Orcutt, Los Olivos and Santa Ynez. Two of the landlords were quietly approached by medical marijuana business owners, but backed out after tenants complained.Black said her department has recently been inundated with requests for permits to establish medical marijuana dispensaries. “We’ve received inquiries in Old Town Orcutt, in Orcutt, Santa Ynez, Los Olivos, Goleta and Summerland,” Black said. “So really it’s an issue that seems to be affecting pretty much all of our urbanized areas.” In addition to lax regulations, county leaders and residents worry that the barriers in place in cities could turn the unincorporated areas into a magnet for marijuana dispensaries. San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties have moratoriums and bans to keep pot shops out. And every city in the Santa Barbara County has enacted a moratorium or ban, too, most recently the city of Santa Barbara.
The Santa Barbara City Council, which in recent years has seen a rollout of dispensaries within its boundary, adopted a temporary moratorium Tuesday on dispensaries until it figures out how to close loopholes in the city’s dispensary ordinance. Supervisor Salud Carbajal, whose 1st District has two dispensaries in Summerland, said the move by Santa Barbara created a greater sense of urgency to get a county moratorium approved much sooner than the January date — even suggesting that one be adopted at the hearing.
Ultimately, the need to get an airtight draft ordinance together prevailed over an emergency moratorium that county counsel said could be fraught with statutory problems. “We need to take the bull by the horns locally and do something as quick as we can, but we need to do it right,” Wolf said. County counsel also told supervisors that the outcome of a lawsuit against the city of Anaheim, which outright banned medical marijuana dispensaries, would give county staff guidance when drafting an ordinance. A court decision is expected to arrive late this month.
Appellants in that case have argued that Anaheim’s ban is illegal because it preempts the state’s Medical Marijuana Program Act of 2004, also known as Senate Bill 420. The law allows qualified patients and caregivers to associate collectively or cooperatively to cultivate medical marijuana for medical purposes. Supporters of a moratorium or even a ban on dispensaries told the supervisors to move quickly. Sheriff Bill Brown cited crime statistics and investigations that have linked dispensaries to crimes, such as illegal drug sales, assault, robbery, extortion, homicide and rape. He urged the board to impose a moratorium until federal and state marijuana laws were reconciled.
“Dispensaries are attractive targets for criminals and are often times seen as soft targets,” he said. “Two commodities that they have that are obviously desirous: one is the drug itself and the other is the money that is on the premises that is made from the sale of the drugs.” He said that the discrepancy between federal law, which prohibits marijuana use under any circumstances, and state law puts “deputies and our police officers in the fields in a very difficult and awkward situation.”
One speaker countered by noting that the Obama administration had already loosened the tangle of this state-federal discrepancy by declaring that it would no longer raid dispensaries that complied with state law. Dennis Schoen of Los Olivos, a father of two students at Santa Ynez Valley Union High School, said he had no problem with state law, just with the way medicinal marijuana is being distributed. “There’s too much crime associated with it, and we’re stretching our law enforcement needs,” he said. “I think the original proposition as it was passed never talked about sales of marijuana for profit. That’s really what we have going on instead of collectives helping people in need.”
An opponent of a moratorium said his mother, a cancer patient, has benefited from marijuana use and recommended that the board tighten regulations and set a cap on the number of dispensaries allowed. “There are alcohol licenses that have to be out there,” he said. “If someone sells alcohol to anyone under the age of 21, they lose their liquor license. That’s the same type of ordinance that should be set for these collectives. But to outright take that away from patients in need, I find that disheartening.”
Diane Norman, owner of the Miramar Collective in Summerland, said when she opened up her dispensary she was “amazed at how many people truly are ill and derive great benefit from it. One argument that I’ve read is that it affects the community. How does it affect the neighborhood? If you took a video of the people entering my collective and compared it to one of Vons or Longs, you would not be able to tell where those people are going. It’s just normal people that are in need of the medicine.”
jfoster@syvjournal.com