Medical pot goes to vote

The city attorney’s office and police chief called them more trouble than they’re worth, and city planning commissioners appeared to agree.

That’s why city planning commissioners voted this week to remove any support for medical marijuana dispensaries from city codes.

In a 5-1 vote, commissioners recommended stripping all language allowing such businesses, authorized by the state medical marijuana law Proposition 215, from the city zoning code. Those who voted yes said they were swayed by fears of federal crackdowns and a belief that dispensaries were often used as legal cover for recreational users. The recommendation will now go to the City Council to be voted on as a city ordinance.

The decision won’t affect any businesses now in Huntington Beach; the city has never had any licensed facilities selling marijuana, according to staff reports.

Before the vote, Police Chief Ken Small told commissioners he strongly opposed allowing dispensaries in the city, calling them a magnet for crime and counter to what voters intended when they passed a law allowing medical cannabis. Instead, he said, they draw crime to the area surrounding them and overwhelmingly serve “young people who exhibit no outward signs of problems.”

“Personally and professionally, I don’t oppose people getting what they have a medical need for,” he said. “But I wouldn’t want you to get swayed by that argument when making a decision, because that’s not what these dispensaries are.”

Some commissioners who flirted with the idea of legalized cannabis said they couldn’t allow it in this form.

“It is somewhat ridiculous how this business is conducted,” said Commissioner Devin Dwyer, who has spoken positively of medical marijuana at past meetings. “I would be for legalization if there was a different way of dispensing it similar to any pharmaceutical you could pick up at a pharmacy.”

The one opponent to the vote, Commissioner Joe Shaw, said he believed the city could rein in any abuses of the system with careful lawmaking.

“I have a problem making a vote that could possibly take away something that’s helping someone terminally ill,” he said.

In 2005, the city passed an ordinance to allow such dispensaries, only to have the council change course and vote to remove the language a few months later. In the meantime, the Supreme Court had ruled that state medical marijuana laws did not trump federal power to regulate drugs. Only recently did the Planning Commission take up the issue to follow through on the council’s request, two years later.

The vote came a month and a half after the commission asked for more information; in August, commissioners said they needed a better explanation of the city’s different obligations under state and federal law.