LAKEPORT, Calif. – A Tuesday discussion meant to focus on starting the public review process for medical marijuana dispensary rules ended up revealing deep philosophical divisions in the community over the drug and how it could shape the county's future.
Following nearly three hours of discussion and community input the board gave Community Development Director Rick Coel the direction he was seeking in order to begin drafting a proposed ordinance to govern medical marijuana dispensaries, including how they should be operated and where they should be located.
Board Chair Jim Comstock attempted to keep public comments on track, asking that the suggested benefits of medical marijuana not be reviewed at length – as they have been in the several previous public workshops on medical marijuana dispensaries and zoning.
However, while pro-marijuana speakers defended the drug and having dispensaries available, a large and outspoken group questioned the validity of the drug and argued that many people claim medical use as a cover for recreational use, which remains illegal in California.
The Lake County Chamber of Commerce sent out an e-mail blast to members Tuesday morning, urging attendance at the hearing by local business owners in order to create a balance of opinion, because it stated that most of those in attendance at previous workshops run dispensaries, use medical marijuana or cultivate.
“The 'regular working people’ are busy running their businesses, so they are not represented at the meetings,” the message said.
“The Lake County Chamber is not advocating a ban or moratorium, rather that they be kept off ‘Main Street’ anywhere in Lake County,” the message concluded.
The effort to put together an ordinance relating to dispensaries has been under way since the spring of 2009, when Coel and his department served several notices of violation on dispensaries around the county, as Lake County News has reported.
While those notices of violation were later lifted, the board put in place a moratorium on new dispensaries opening in September 2009 – and renewed it last September – in an effort to get rules established.
Coel said there are currently 12 medical marijuana dispensaries in the county – it was also noted that 12 pharmacies operate around the county – and that nine or 10 of the dispensaries were in operation at the time of the original 2009 moratorium.
Some new dispensaries still attempted to open after the moratorium was implemented, and since then three violation notices have been served, Coel said.
The city of Clearlake also has a moratorium on new dispensaries opening, and the city of Lakeport has banned cultivation in the city limits.
Coel said he wanted to get a proposed draft ready so the public review process could begin.
His written report, which he went over with the board, stated that “any ordinance regarding medical marijuana dispensaries in Lake County must balance the needs of all residents, both the needs and concerns of persons who use medical marijuana and the needs of property owners in both residential and commercial areas of the county.”
He told the board that his department had concluded that the most appropriate zoning for dispensaries is the C3 commercial, M1 or M2 manufacturing zoning areas, which cover industrial uses. Those districts, he said, avoid tourist-supporting and family-oriented businesses, and also would ensure that dispensaries aren't located adjacent to residences, restaurants, real estate offices and public parks.
There are approximately 247 parcels countywide – most of them located in the Coyote Valley area near Middletown, south Lakeport and Kelseyville – that could accommodate the dispensary use based on those zoning suggestions, Coel said.
Nine of the existing dispensaries are located in C2 zoning, where Coel suggested it was appropriate to allow them to continue as long as they were approved for a major use permit, they were not located within 1,000 feet of a public school and had been in continuous operation since the Sept. 15, 2009, adoption of the initial moratorium.
He said the new ordinance should set a maximum number of dispensaries allowed in the county, which he suggested should be 12, not counting the two currently operating in Clearlake. Even then, Coel said the ratio of 13 to 14 dispensaries countywide for a population of 65,000 is high compared to other jurisdictions.
Supervisor Rob Brown said he had concerns about government limiting the numbers of any kind of business. “Where does that end?”
He added, “Everything else looks good in the ordinance, but that I have a concern with.”
Divisions become clear
Approximately 27 people testified during the roughly one-hour portion of the meeting's public comment portion.
Of those, 13 were medical marijuana users, collective owners and operators, a landlord, advocates or supporters who wanted to see dispensaries allowed and had some issue or comment on Community Development's proposals.
Two speakers focused only on wanting rules to prohibit loitering or close proximity to schools.
Still another 12 who spoke were citizens who had serious concerns about medical marijuana in general and wanted strict rules about dispensaries, or didn't want them allowed at all, as – Comstock noted during the meeting – is the case in 22 other counties statewide.
Lower Lake attorney Ron Green, who along with retired District 1 Supervisors Ed Robey had submitted their own draft ordinance to the county, said he and Robey had “differences” to staff's approach.
In particular, they wanted to grandfather in all existing dispensaries, allow as many as 15 to operate, locate them in C2 zoning and set up a regulatory licensing procedure, rather than minor or major user permits – as he said West Hollywood had done last year.
They also wanted the distance from schools reduced to 600 feet from 1,000 feet, which is the distance the state's Alcoholic Beverage Control agency requires between liquor stores and schools, Green said.
Green suggested that medical marijuana could provide the county with a specific new strain of tourism, a statement that would be the source of responses from community members and business owners during the meeting.
Daniel Chadwick, president of H2C, a collective located in downtown Middletown, said he's located 850 feet from local schools, and he called it “impossible” to find a location 1,000 feet away. Chadwick said he didn't want to have to relocate to a manufacturing zone.
Peter Windrem, a Kelseyville resident and well-known local attorney, told the board that, if he had his way, the county would ban dispensaries entirely for any number of reasons.
While Windrem conceded that there are people who have legitimate need for treatment, he called the issuance of medical marijuana cards “a charade.”
“They are handed out like popcorn and the predominate use of those cards is for the purely recreational use of marijuana,” Windrem said.
With there already being 12 dispensaries in the county's unincorporated areas, the same number as pharmacies, Windrem said the notion that there are that many sick people in Lake County being served by medical marijuana “stretches belief.”
He said situations in some communities, like Upper Sake, “have gotten out of control,” and said the vision that his friend Green suggested about medical marijuana tourism “is a nightmare.” Magnifying the drug culture in such a way pulls the county down, said Windrem, “it does not lift us up.”
Windrem encouraged the board to keep the moratorium in effect, noting that the 12 dispensaries already operating is “more than enough.”
He said he saw the county as an increasingly healthy place, “and dispensaries are not a part of that.” As his remarks ended and he left the podium, he received a round of applause.
Upper Lake Nancy Brier said she didn't care if people smoke pot or not, but she said life in her town has become a nightmare over the last few years because of medical marijuana-related activities there.
She held up pictures of downtown Upper Lake, where she said people gather during the week, waiting to get in to Dr. Milan Hopkins' office to get medical marijuana recommendations.
As Brier has attempted to walk through town she's encountered the crowds, had one grown man urinate in front of her young daughter and others use inappropriate language, had medical marijuana patients who had come from out of town spend the night camping in her driveway – leaving trash and blocking her when she tried to leave to take her daughter to school the next morning.
“It's really hard to live on a street where that is happening every single day,” said Brier, who added that she moved to Lake County because she thought it was a good place to raise children.
But after dispensaries opened and changed the town's flavor, “I so regret that decision,” she said.
Brier wanted a compromise, asking that dispensaries not be on Main Street. She said her neighbors were the victim of a home invasion after they were mistaken for a grow house. “This situation is so completely out of control.”
Clearlake Oaks resident Olga Martin Steele said she's been to Upper Lake many times and hasn't seen what Brier reported. “There is another view.”
Steele also suggested that the county hadn't done enough analysis of the dispensary issue to make a good decision.
In response, Coel said the county has held a number of workshops and discussions on the merits of a future ordinance, and the formal ordinance process – once begun – will include more analysis.
Gary Lewis, an Upper Lake resident and former District 3 supervisor, said he agreed completely with Windrem. He saw no need for dispensaries, adding that prescribing should take place through pharmacies.
He said Upper Lake High School Superintendent Pat Iaccino came to a North Shore Business Association and pleaded with them for help against marijuana, because so many students are coming to school high on the drug.
Lewis, who noted he had been in the county for 35 years, told the board, “I'm disgusted with the direction this county is going.”
The county has been trying to bring people here for recreation, and Lewis said he found it “sickening” to hear people suggest that marijuana will be the new draw. He said Lake should join other counties in banning dispensaries.
Trena Pauley of the Kelseyville Business Association followed Lewis, telling the board, “We are adamantly against having a dispensary in downtown Kelseyville.”
David Moses, owner of Alternative Solutions in Clearlake Oaks, said his dispensary and others around the county contribute to community causes, and it's unfair to push them out.
“They're here to stay,” he said of dispensaries.
Pharmacist Bill Kearney said pharmacists go to school for six to seven years to learn the skills necessary to distribute medications, and yet people without any knowledge of what marijuana can do are being licensed to dispense it medically.
“We do not need more dispensaries, we need more regulations,” said Kearney, suggesting that medial marijuana should only be dispensed through pharmacies.
Brown asked if pharmacies currently dispense the drug. Kearney said no, because under federal law it's a class one substance.
“That's what makes this all so ludicrous to me,” said Kearney.
Business owner Armand Pauly cited Lake County's own recently completed health needs assessment, which pointed to high substance use and abuse numbers for the county, especially amongst its young people.
He said marijuana is a gateway drug, and called the idea that medical marijuana would help tourism “perverted.”
Upper Lake contractor Tom Carter – currently under federal indictment for marijuana-related charges – agreed with Brown that there shouldn't be a cap on dispensaries.
He said he's worked on renovating Hopkins' office and finds stories about the impact on downtown Upper Lake “greatly exaggerated.”
With commonsense guidelines, “This thing will all settle out in due time,” Carter said.
Carter suggested that the county needed to put its resources toward fighting methamphetamine and focus on th big problems, which he said didn't include marijuana.
Responding to the issue of loitering raised by several people, Jon Hanson, owner of MJ's Place in Upper Lake, said people don't loiter in front of his dispensary, and that the town's dispensaries get confused with Hopkins' office.
Hanson added that he pays state and federal tax, and donates money to local schools.
Board members focus on proposals
When board members asked Coel about the impacts of staff's proposed guidelines on current dispensaries, he replied that under the 1,000 foot distance requirement from schools, Moses' Clearlake Oaks dispensary would be impacted, as it's currently located 625 feet from East Lake Elementary School.
He also told the board that the county doesn't have a business license program, and he's proud of that, since it creates a lot of work for staff. The use permit process is better, he said, since the entitlements accompany the property.
During the board's discussion, Brown called Green's assertion about tourism and pot “the biggest joke I've ever heard in my life.”
Supervisor Anthony Farrington said, in his opinion, the buck stopped with physicians, who he said should be held accountable for prescribing the drug.
He said he felt Coel's proposals were taking the county in the right direction. “I do think a regulation of some sort is proper.”
Rushing called the discussion “interesting,” noting the polarization. She acknowledged that marijuana has created huge problems in the schools but said that pinning that on dispensaries is not fair, adding that there was “a lot of hyperbole” on both sides of the discussion. She didn't like the pictures that Brier presented because she said it grouped people by how they look.
She said she supported the permit process for now, and said licensing would be the next step and more appropriate if recreation use is approved in California. Rushing also said she felt a cap was appropriate, as were proposals for the distance from schools, loitering, lighting and smoking on site.
Farrington said he struggled with the cap idea, noting that it would set a precedent.
Brown was concerned about making the guidelines useful and realistic. “Why create an ordinance you can't enforce?”
Coel took from the discussion a general board consensus on most of the points he brought them, and said as they move through the formal ordinance process the cap issue will be discussed further.
For now, Coel is planning to begin drafting the proposed ordinance, which will be circulated to the sheriff and the health department. A legal notice will then be prepared in advance of the first hearing before the Lake County Planning Commission.
“We really appreciate the direction today,” he told the supervisors.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow Lake County News on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LakeCoNews , on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lake-County-News/143156775604?ref=mf and on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/LakeCoNews .
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