San Diego County remains only local government with rules allowing dispensaries
Written by
Christopher Cadelago
3:57 p.m., March 30, 2012
Follow »
- Twitter: @ccadelago
- Facebook: sdutpolitics
Amid a massive federal crackdown, medical marijuana dispensaries announced plans Friday to expand their efforts beyond the city of San Diego, proposing ballot initiatives in five local municipalities to regulate storefront operators and generate additional revenue through a sales tax.
The proposals — filed with Encinitas, Del Mar, Solana Beach, Lemon Grove and La Mesa — would limit storefront dispensaries to commercial and industrial areas and levy a 2.5 percent tax on retail transactions. They also would allow cities to recover their expenses, establish security measures and hours of operation and require licensing by existing city departments.
San Diego County is the only local government with rules allowing dispensaries. Reaction from each of the five cities ranged from skepticism that proponents would have enough time to qualify a measure, to concerns with having storefront operators locating in their communities, to sympathy for patients in need of medicinal marijuana.
The proposed ballot measures largely mirror one planned for the city of San Diego. All are being coordinated by Citizens for Patient Rights in connection with the Patient Care Association, a trade organization of and for nonprofit dispensaries.
“Our organization has wanted to create safe access throughout as much of the county as possible,” James Schmachtenberger, chairman of the PCA, said Friday. “As we began collecting signatures for the initiative in San Diego, we saw the need of patients in outlying areas and we realized we were just under the deadline for when ballot measures would need to be turned in to qualify for the election in November.”
A separate group of medical marijuana supporters has launched a citizen-initiated petition to reverse a dispensary ban in Imperial Beach.
The efforts come about a month after the U.S. Attorney’s Office revealed that more than 200 medical marijuana collectives in San Diego and Imperial counties have closed since federal prosecutors announced enforcement actions aimed at growers and distributors in California. Many of the local closures were attributed to lawsuits and settlements involving the City Attorney’s Office in San Diego.
Critics of dispensaries say they are illegal and threaten neighborhood security.
Representatives from the trade association and its political action committee acknowledge that there’s little they could do to stem the flow of federal action because marijuana is illegal under U.S. law. However, they reiterated that changing regulations across the county was a critical aspect of their mission to provide access to medicinal cannabis while respecting community desires such as ensuring public safety, preventing diversion of the drug for recreational use and keeping collectives away from areas where children congregate.
The most significant differences between the ordinance proposed for San Diego and ones for the other cities is that accreditation would be handled by existing departments rather than a third-party. Cities also would have a 1,000-foot buffer between collectives.
Proponents noted that while they need 62,057 valid signatures from registered voters to qualify the measure for the November ballot in San Diego, the combined total for the other communities is estimated to be fewer than 10,000. In Del Mar, they would need about 320.
No comments:
Post a Comment