LAKEPORT – An Oakland attorney has put the City of Lakeport on notice that they could be open to a lawsuit for adopting an ordinance earlier this year to ban medical marijuana cultivation in the city limits.
William G. Panzer sent the letter to Lakeport City Attorney Steve Brookes more than a month ago, according to Brookes.
On March 6, the City Council adopted Ordinance 861, which makes medical marijuana cultivation within Lakeport's city limits illegal, as Lake County News previously reported.
Police Chief Kevin Burke wrote the ordinance, which cites concerns of public safety and plant odor as reasons for keeping the plant out.
On the public safety side, Burke previously told Lake County News that his concerns peaked after an incident last year. He explained that an attempted burglary of a home where medical marijuana was grown resulted in shots being fired in a city neighborhood.
Burke added that he felt cultivation is more appropriate for non-urban areas.
Panzer's letter contains an “implied threat” of litigation, said Brookes, so he took it to the City Council for a closed session discussion last Tuesday evening following the regular meeting.
The session turned out to be information only, with the council making no decision, Brookes said.
“No real direction was given to me,” he said, adding that the ordinance still stands at this point.
In the letter, Panzer explains that California National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and several Lakeport residents contacted him about the ordinance. He said he reviewed it and is concerned “that it appears to be in direct violation of State law, and by its implementation and enforcement will likely cause irreparable harm to lawful medical cannabis patients living in Lakeport.”
Panzer makes several points about how he believes the ordinance violates state Health and Safety Code, particularly how in interferes with how the code allows qualified patients or primary caregivers to “maintain no more than six mature or 12 immature marijuana plants per qualified patient.”
His analysis concludes that counties and cities can enact guidelines allowing medical marijuana patients to have more medical marijuana than state limits, but not less. He cites a California Supreme Court that notes the medical marijuana amounts set for in state law were intended “to be the threshold, not the ceiling.”
Panzer told Brookes in the letter that if the city continues with “an outright ban on all cultivation of otherwise lawful medical cannabis,” city residents who are medical marijuana patients “are prepared to proceed with litigation to enforce the legal rights of medical cannabis patients residing in Lakeport.”
Calls to Panzer's office were not returned.
Brookes said he and Panzer have spoken several times about the ordinance, as well as current state and federal law. “We've had a professional dialog,” he said.
Brookes defended the moratorium, saying jurisdictions such as Lakeport have a right to regulate medical marijuana; the question is, just how far they can regulate it.
“No one has said that they can't possess their medicine, use their medicine, it's just the issue of outdoor cultivation and the potential for violence that that creates, as evidenced by the [Renato] Hughes case and one incident where shots were fired” in Lakeport, he explained.
The reference to the Hughes case arises from the District Attorney's Office allegation that Hughes and his accomplices broke into the Clearlake Park home of Shannon Edmonds in December 2005 to steal medical marijuana. That incident resulted in the shooting death of Hughes' two alleged accomplices and injuries to members of Edmonds' family.
Lakeport isn't alone in its concerns about medical marijuana.
On April 12, the Clearlake City Council adopted an urgency ordinance that extended a temporary moratorium on medical marijuana first instituted last year.
City Attorney Tom Gibson urged the Clearlake City Council to adopt the one-year extension in the hope that ongoing medical marijuana lawsuits around the state will be resolved by the time the moratorium runs out next April.
Resolution of those suits, said Gibson, should hopefully clarify how to best proceed with the disparity between federal law – which does not recognize medical marijuana – and the state's Compassionate Use Act, passed in 1996.
Donna Serna of the Lake County Chapter of Americans for Safe Access – whose protests against the Lakeport ban included contacting Panzer – said NORML and Americans for Safe Access have not sent any letters to Clearlake protesting its temporary moratorium.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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