Supes to appoint Prop. 215 subcommittee

Medical marijuana advocates concerned about potential rollback

Humboldt Sentinel staff
9/4/09

Eureka

Humboldt County’s five-year-old ordinance permitting increased medical marijuana possession and cultivation limits could be the subject of a renewed legislative struggle in the months to come, thanks to a move by Supervisors Mark Lovelace and Jimmy Smith.

At next Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Lovelace and Smith put on the agenda consideration of the appointment of a new subcommittee to “research medical marijuana management alternatives.”

Smith cast one of the two votes against the 2004 ordinance setting county-wide three pound possession and 100 square foot cultivation limits for patients with a valid doctor’s recommendation under the provisions of Proposition 215. Otherwise known as Health and Safety Code 11362.5, this medical marijuana initiative was approved by California voters in 1996. Its companion Senate Bill 420, setting default possession and cultivation limits which cities and counties could improve upon, was approved by the legislature and governor in 2003.

Neighboring Mendocino and Trinity Counties had similar limits to Humboldt, but rolled them back in recent years to the default state minimums of eight ounces possession and six mature plants in cultivation per patient. An opinion issued by Attorney General Jerry Brown last year additionally constricted 215 rights by voiding many of the provisions for “primary caregivers” to cultivate cannabis on behalf of patients, unless the caregivers were otherwise primarily responsible for the health, safety or housing of the patients.

Humboldt County’s ordinance was the result of a lengthy series of meetings of what was then known as the Medical Marijuana Task Force, a collection of law enforcement, health care and patient’s rights advocates, and some in the medical marijuana community are concerned that a subcommittee consisting of Lovelace and Smith would seek to circumvent this broader consultative process.

“Most people who have grows are almost always below the maximum amount they’re allowed to have in Humboldt County,” said Greg Allen, an Arcata-based attorney who represents Humboldt Medical Supply, a 215 clinic in Arcata. HMS was involved in litigation against the City of Arcata when city officials acted outside municipal law and beyond City Council oversight to pull the permits on their clinic.

Allen, who also serves as chair of the Redwood Chapter, American Civil Liberties Union, questioned whether a move to roll back possession and cultivation limits wouldn’t primarily target individual patients and mom-and-pop growers.

“Not everyone is equally talented, so it would make it very hard on the unskilled grower,” he said. “It’s probably worth noting that there’d be a higher percentage of true medical growers who are unskilled, so going to a reduced number of plants is going to have the affect of making things extremely difficult for the unskilled grower.”

The ACLU and the Southern Humboldt-based Civil Liberties Monitoring Project have confronted Supervisors in recent months over the behavior of the county’s Code Enforcement Task Force, where items such as composting toilets and other minor code infractions triggered massive armed law enforcement response teams deployed to rural homes on the pretext of allowing inspections by building officials. Yet one idea that might garner broader support, according to Allen, would be to specifically require growers to keep their electrical wiring up to safety code standards.

“Folks who have grows with wiring that’s not up to code pose a grave risk to their neighbors and themselves,” Allen said.

While Smith’s attitude towards Prop. 215 is well known, less clear is what Lovelace would do -- he stayed quiet on the subject during his abbreviated campaign last spring, and key supporters of his, such as Arcata Eye editor Kevin Hoover, have been at the forefront of rousting grow houses out of Arcata, the only incorporated city in the Third District which Lovelace represents.

Arcata also amended its medical marijuana ordinance last year, restricting 215-related grows to 50 square feet and arming city inspectors with the authority to order power meters to be removed from suspected grow houses. Eureka Councilmember Larry Glass’ failed attempt to impose mandatory rental inspections was also widely seen as a method of flushing 215 growers out of his city.

The Board will convene their meeting at 9 a.m. Tuesday in Supervisors’ Chambers at the county courthouse.