Council frowns on pot clinics

Opening a medical marijuana dispensary probably won’t be legal for much longer in Huntington Beach.

City Council members voted 5-2 to write an ordinance to strip all allowances for such a business out of the city’s zoning codes. They will vote on that ordinance in the future, but council members made their views known as they discussed the topic.

Those who voted yes said a 1996 statewide ballot initiative that legalized medical marijuana in the state was badly written and had too many loopholes that encouraged crime, adding that recent federal raids on dispensaries made them too legally complicated to allow.

The council put in rules to allow and regulate dispensaries in 2005, but reversed itself only a few months later. But it took two years for the Planning Commission to follow through with removing the regulations; now it takes council approval to take them out for good.

Councilwomen Jill Hardy and Debbie Cook voted against drafting an ordinance, citing worries they would deprive the seriously ill of a possible treatment.

Huntington Beach resident Marla James, a volunteer at an Orange County dispensary who said she uses cannabis to control the “constant pain” caused by flesh-eating bacteria, said city officials had a skewed picture of the issue. She said dispensaries were legitimate places to help the sick and that county government was much more willing to listen on the issue.

“We want to be taxed, we want to be regulated, and we’ll do it the way you want,” she said. “Apparently Chief [Ken] Small has never been in a dispensary. They’ll provide us with someone who will help us clean our house and walk our dogs, even support groups about pain.”

There have never been any licensed dispensaries in Huntington Beach.

Dispensaries attract crime, often launder money, and harm the communities around them, Small said. He added that most who go to such facilities appear young and illness-free, and that many are taking advantage of the system in a way voters never intended.

“I don’t think the city of Huntington Beach has the ability to regulate a medical marijuana dispensary,” he said. “I don’t think that’s our job, and I don’t know who in city government is going to do it. There’s got to be somebody above our level that makes a decision to do that; it takes them to do that.”