APPLE VALLEY – The Town Council on Tuesday unanimously approved an ordinance that plugs up a hole in the town’s Development Code that would allow medical marijuana dispensaries (MMD) to potentially continue operations in Apple Valley.
The ordinance prohibits other MMD operations from making deliveries into the town from dispensaries based outside its limits.
Apple Valley’s code previously banned all MMDs inside the Town, defining dispensaries as stationary storefront and “hybrid” methods of operation that include operators dispensing marijuana from a mobile or offsite standalone delivery source that is independent of an office.
The newly-adopted ordinance now expressly prohibits other “novel approaches to MMD operation that have surfaced in the recent weeks,” such as making deliveries into the town from MMDs based outside of Apple Valley, according to a staff report by Town Attorney John Brown.
Barbara Clements, a 19-year resident of Apple Valley, spoke during public comment to urge the Town Council to reconsider the comprehensive ban on residents’ access to medical marijuana in their town.
“I feel like you’re taking away my access to my medicine,” Clements told the Town Council, explaining she has a legal right to use medicinal marijuana due to her medical condition. “I feel like that we’re kind of taking a step backward. I feel this void may be filled by criminals. Marijuana use is not going to stop; it’s just (about) how people are going to get it. I’m going to be forced to go out to parks or a street to buy medical marijuana even though I am legal.”
During the council’s discussion for the public hearing, Councilman Scott Nassif explained that the impossibility of regulating medical marijuana operations on a local level is the reason the council must support the ordinance.
“Trying to regulate anything at the local level on that magnitude is just impossible,” Nassif said. “You see other cities struggling with it. For us to do that is just not practical at a local level. So that’s why we need to support these types of ordinances. And we’re not denying access or change anything that hasn’t been there for years, we’re just looking at it from a land use point of view and from a business’s point of view.”
In his presentation, Brown said staff recommended the adoption of the urgency ordinance to clarify Apple Valley’s compliance with federal and state law and California Case Law.
“There may come a time in California where our town and others will be more clearly authorized by state law to address this issue,” Brown told the council. “But in the time being, the direction of the Town Council consistently to the Town Attorney’s Office and the Apple Valley Police Department has been to in effect to enforce the Town’s ban on medical marijuana dispensaries.”
In his report, Brown said that the town’s existing code does not “expressly declare MMDs to be a public nuisance and does not go so far as to prohibit any attempt to locate, operate, own, lease, supply, allow to operate or aid, abet or assist MMD operation in the Town.”
In his presentation, Brown described the new ordinance as a means for Apple Valley to enforce “the broadest possible restrictions presently available to the Town by reason of the rulings of the California Supreme Court (for) a complete ban on either fixed medical marijuana dispenseries or various permeations of that, including the delivery of medical marijuana, either externally into the Town or internally within the Town.”
In his staff report, Brown said that in July at least five services within 10 miles of Apple Valley advertised direct delivery of marijuana within the town on Weedmaps.com, which is an Internet commercial listing service. The report also states that an increase in mobile dispensaries has been found to coincide with successful enforcement actions involving storefront dispensaries.
“The failure to prohibit mobile marijuana dispensaries or medical marijuana dispensaries may encourage the proliferation of MMDs in the town and expose the town to costs related to regulation, enforcement, and the negative secondary effects of dispensaries including an increase in violent crime,” Brown said in his report.
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BACKGROUND
According to Brown’s staff report, some cities and counties across California began to experience a proliferation of storefront medical marijuana dispensaries claiming to be legal collectives or cooperatives after the initial passage of the Compassionate Use Act, approved in 1996 as Proposition 215.
Aside from the fact that the use and distribution of marijuana in any form is illegal under federal law, the existence of storefront dispensaries is usually illegal under California law because it is nearly impossible to comply with the CUA and the Medical Marijuana Program Act, also known as SB 420, while catering to a large membership, the report stated.
Download the staff report at applevalley.org/…documentid=12908.
For more information on the Town of Apple Valley, visit applevalley.org.
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The Field Poll, a non-partisan survey of public opinion in California, also released its report on Tuesday, showing a “reversal of attitudes toward marijuana” through a majority that now favors use and decriminalization.
Because there are several measures in the works, the Field is testing the attitude of California voters first, which it has been doing since 1969. Here are some of the results:
– Legalize it so it can be purchased by anyone: 8 percent
– Legalize it with age and other controls, like those for alcohol: 47 percent
– Keep present ban, but make penalties less severe: 12 percent
– Strictly enforce current laws: 17 percent
– Pass tougher laws: 14 percent
– No opinion: 4 percent
And here are the current percentages on ‘California Cannibis Hemp Initiative 2014′ in circulation:
– Yes: 56 percent
– No: 39 percent
– Undecided: 5 percent
View the Field Poll at field.com/fieldpollonline.