City Attorney recommends suspension of longstanding medical marijuana ordinance
By Charles Douglas
Humboldt Sentinel
The day after elected representatives in Eureka are all but certain to suspend the implementation of their own medical marijuana ordinance after soliciting the fait accompli opinion of the Feds, Arcata looks set to follow their lead.
At their City Council meeting on Wednesday, representatives will receive a report from City Attorney Nancy Diamond — the same legal counsel under fire for embroiling the municipality in various threatened or actual lawsuits resultant from her advice on civil rights issues — which appears to recommend the suspension of an ordinance already under implementation for over three years.
“At present, there are four applications pending for medical marijuana cooperative and collective use permits,” Diamond stated in her report. “The City’s actions pursuant to those pending permit applications appear to expose the City to a credible, although not precisely defined, risk of exposure to federal prosecution. Discontinuing the current processing of use permit applications…would most likely protect the City from federal enforcement.”
A previous incarnation of the Arcata City Council unanimously adopted a medical marijuana ordinance which sought to simultaneously limit residential grow houses and provide for properly permitted medical marijuana dispensaries organized as not-for-profit collectives as per direction from then-Attorney General Jerry Brown. The college town’s previous crop of representatives disregarded the previous round of Federal threats as empty, instead opting to uphold state law as stipulated in California Health and Safety Code 11362.5, otherwise known as Proposition 215, adopted by a majority of state voters 15 years ago.
With the complete collapse of the local Green Party and the departure of the last Green officeholders from the Arcata Council after 18 continuous years of representation, the body has taken a notably conservative turn, most notoriously with an anti-panhandling ordinance, adopted last year, which criminalizes the holding of a sign at a street corner asking for donations. A lawsuit is underway challenging this law, filed by liberal campaign manager Richard Salzman.
While Eureka officials — in particular Interim Chief Murl Harpham and City Manager Dave Tyson — have come under criticism for effectively soliciting Federal threats of enforcement action against their city, apparently City of Arcata staff have been up to similar activity.
On Aug. 23, Diamond and Arcata Police Chief Tom Chapman met with the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California — a meeting apparently called at the behest of Diamond.
According to the report, Diamond and Chapman were told there was “an increasingly urgent need for her to take prosecutorial action in an attempt to deter the escalation of flagrant [Controlled Substances Act] violations.” They were also told that the City’s conformance with state law and state Attorney General guidelines would not be a defense to federal prosecution; this opinion would seem to fly in the face of the California Constitution, which instructs local governments to obey state law in the incidence of any federal-state conflict.
The Arcata City Council kicks off its public proceedings for the month on Oct. 5 at 6 p.m.Incidentally, the performance evaluation of Diamond is set for a closed session meeting of the Council at 4 p.m. that same day.
I have suffered with chronic pain all over my body for over 30 years and no doctor alive has found any drug that will help me without causing toxic effects or being ineffective. One dose of medical marijuana and the pain was gone. Why is something this good illegal???
It did not impair my brain like alcohol or dull my thinking. It did not make me act crazy or become addicted. I think there is a lot of faulty information being promoted by the feds for some reason I am sure they profit by.
I urge doctors to prescribe it and city, state and federal entities to allow it. Or at least, explain why it should be illegal in rational words.