NEWS: Cannabis in Demand

Medical marijuana advocates are intensifying efforts aimed at persuading southwest Riverside County jurisdictions to allow them to distribute the controversial substance to people who have received doctor recommendations for its use.

Such scenes have unfolded publicly in Lake Elsinore, Temecula and Murrieta as activists press government officials to relax zoning restrictions that have blocked the opening of storefront operations where medical marijuana could be legally distributed.

The bans remain intact in those cities and others despite a 13-year-old state referendum that opened the door for the establishment of medical marijuana collectives and dispensaries. California is one of more than a dozen states and several countries that have legalized small amounts of marijuana or allow its use for serious health conditions.

"The county and local bans create undue and unnecessary hardships for law-abiding qualified patients to access medical cannabis," said Wayne Williams, a Wildomar activist who has organized lobbying efforts in Lake Elsinore.

"Our only option is to obtain it from illicit markets or use home delivery services that are not regulated or pay taxes and provide no community benefits," he said.

The activists are urging local municipalities to follow the lead of Palm Springs, Los Angeles and a handful of other Southern California cities that have taken steps to balance community concerns against the rights of medical marijuana patients.

Mark Chavez has frequently joined Williams in his lobbying efforts by attending Lake Elsinore council meetings whenever he can. Chavez, a Lake Elsinore resident, said medical marijuana helps ease the pain and other problems associated with a spinal chord injury he suffered during a fall.

Many activists say their position has been bolstered by a report that University of California’s San Diego Center of Medicinal Cannabis Research recently presented to the state Legislature. That study found there is "reasonable evidence that cannabis is a promising treatment" for some pain-related medical conditions.

Medical marijuana activists have also pressed Riverside County Sheriff Stanley Sniff for his take on the distribution issue. Sniff was verbally grilled during a Jan. 20 community forum in Old Town Temecula.

Sniff detailed one of the underlying dilemmas that have stymied medical marijuana distribution. It is still illegal under federal law to possess marijuana, which adds to the quandary that grips local and state law enforcement agencies.

In recent months, however, federal authorities have eased marijuana enforcement efforts in states where medical marijuana laws have been enacted.

"That’s the conflict we’re dealing with," Sniff said.

Collectives are legal in Riverside County, but they must be run as nonprofit operations, Sniff explained.

Yet the activists so far haven’t dented the wall of cities that have repeatedly extended zoning moratoriums that block the distribution of medical marijuana within their boundaries.

Murrieta approved its moratorium five years ago and has repeatedly extended it. Canyon Lake extended its temporary ban for nearly another year on Jan. 6. No pro-marijuana lobbying efforts surfaced during that meeting, according to city records.

A debate ensured between Lake Elsinore marijuana advocates and opponents on Jan. 26. Medical marijuana advocates pressed their case, but a high school senior and a few adult residents countered those views.

The student said she feared allowing a dispensary to open could make it easier for youths to obtain marijuana. The other critic worried that authorizing a dispensary could perpetuate negative drug stereotypes that have shadowed Lake Elsinore for years.

In the end, Elsinore council members voted to extend their city’s zoning moratorium for another year.

But those extensions haven’t dissuaded activists like Donald Lambert, an 80-year-old Murrieta man who says he has never consumed alcohol Advertisement

Mountainview Small Animal Hospital or smoked any substance.

Lambert has spoken twice to the Temecula City Council and once to the Murrieta council over a three-month period that began in November.

He said he was prompted to investigate medical marijuana’s benefits and the laws surrounding its distribution after a San Diego friend who suffers a range of medical problems became snared in legal problems.

"I had no idea it (distribution) was so complicated," Lambert said in a recent telephone interview. "It’s a big can of worms. If you open one can of worms, you find another can of worms."

Lambert said he is focusing his speaking efforts on presenting some of the nuances regarding medical marijuana to the councils. He said he supports measures that would allow cities to authorize medical marijuana distribution centers if they are carefully regulated and kept away from schools and parks.

Temecula council members found themselves being prodded again Tuesday night, when about four audience members spoke out on the issue. Some of the speakers, including Tom Wiggins, represented the Qualified Patients Resource Center at the south end of Old Town.

Wiggins took the podium and reminded the council of his appearance at the last meeting. He talked about how the medical marijuana community needs safe, affordable access to the drug.

"It’s your responsibility to uphold the state constitution," Wiggins said. He read a section of the law that he believed to state the federal government’s inability to trump state law.

The center obtained a city business license to operate as a medical marijuana resource center. The group will provide information to medical marijuana users who want to grow plants for personal use.

In the meantime, Wiggins and other center representatives plan to keep pressing the city to ease its medical marijuana distribution restrictions.

"We’re working to help the city lift their ban, which currently doesn’t let anyone dispense marijuana out of a commercial building," said Wiggins, the center’s patient services director.

"We hope to do that here, but don’t want to get on the city’s bad side so we will wait for the ordinance, abide by it, get this place fire coded, put money into security and do everything we can," he said in an interview.

The group has 150 members, a base that could potentially grow to 1,000 in a year, he said. He’s confident Temecula will eventually allow dispensaries to operate. The center could open its doors in about a month once the moratorium is lifted, he said.

Wiggins hopes that storefront dispensaries or collectives will also eventually be allowed in French Valley and in Murrieta. If permitted, he also sees such businesses selling edible medical marijuana products through a licensed kitchen and chef.

Wiggins said he is willing to work within the systems to clear away misconceptions and other concerns that are currently preventing dispensaries and collectives from operating on a permanent basis.

"We don’t want to be one of those places that opens for six months, makes a bunch of money and gets closed down," Wiggins said. "I see myself here three years from now looking at the beautiful foothills in the distance."

But Temecula officials say they don’t envision any overnight changes, since their ban is not temporary.

"We disagreed with the speakers," Mayor Jeff Comerchero said in an interview after Tuesday’s council session. "They say we’re supposed to draw the line at the state level. Federal law always trumps state law. Federal law creates state law."

City Attorney Peter M. Thorson, said he had no knowledge of what the city was doing about this issue.

Source: The Valley News