Thanks to a moratorium that lasts through October 2013, the current Napa City Council likely won’t take further action on the city’s halted medical marijuana ordinance.
That will be up to the council elected this November, which will have at least one new member, possibly two. Because state law prohibits the moratorium from being extended again, the question of how to balance conflicting state and federal laws regarding medical cannabis will come up during the new council’s first year.
All seven candidates expressed support for the city’s decision to pause the ordinance until the city gets direction from the California Supreme Court or federal government on how to proceed in regulating, or not regulating, one or more marijuana dispensaries within city limits.
Beyond that, few expressed solid plans on how to proceed with the ordinance that was unanimously approved in July 2010.
Bill Bopf, a 76-year-old former city manager in Napa, was the only one of the seven candidates to express an outright dislike of permitting marijuana distribution in the city.
“Medical marijuana supposedly helps some people, but the process is abused,” Bopf said. “I have glaucoma and I could go in and get a prescription for $50 and get all the marijuana I want.”
Bopf said if it was found legally permissible to ban the substance, he would support that effort.
“If a ban could be sustained, I’d do it,” Bopf said. “There are so many other prescription remedies.”
The other six candidates said they are OK with marijuana being used for medicinal purposes.
Candidate Doris Gentry, the 58-year-old Napa Fourth of July Parade organizer, said she believes it’s too easy for people who do not have medical conditions to get prescriptions for the drug and she would like to beef up the city’s dispensary ordinance that was unanimously approved by the current council.
“We really have to take a hard look at the contract, who is going to do it, where it’s going to go,” Gentry said. “I think the current ordinance needs a look at, a better evaluation and needs better guidelines. … It’s not just a dispensary for all the population of Napa.”
Councilman Jim Krider, 61, who is seeking re-election, voted in support of the ordinance. He was not present for the first and most recent votes to implement and extend the moratorium, but did vote in favor of extending the moratorium last November.
Krider said he believes it has been demonstrated that marijuana has medicinal value and said he was being responsive to the citizens of Napa when he voted to allow a dispensary.
“People who need it are the least capable, in a lot of ways, of driving out of town to get it,” Krider said. “I felt it was fair enough, if we wrote an ordinance that was strong enough and had enough teeth in it to have it managed well, that it would be a benefit.”
He said he supported the moratorium because “it seems to be a constantly changing picture.”
“I think right now we just need to take a break and see how the legal battles sort out,” Krider said.
In the event the city does not receive legal clarification by October 2013, Krider said he’d hesitate to deregulate dispensaries in a certain zone or zones of the city.
Napa’s city manager has said decriminalization might be a way for the city to allow medical marijuana dispensaries in Napa without putting the city at risk for potential lawsuits.
“That could be a Pandora’s box,” Krider said. “Nothing comes without a price in deals like this. I would have to look at it very carefully before I’d do something like that. Right now, I doubt that I would.”
Retired fire captain Scot Sedgley, 59, echoed Krider’s concerns of allowing dispensaries to operate in parts of Napa without regulation from the city.
“If you decriminalize one activity in an area, would you then, down the road, decriminalize another activity in another area?” Sedgley said. “I think it becomes a real headache for the legal system, for the street patrol officers.”
Sedgley said he believes the city’s ordinance was the best such law he’d seen and he believes marijuana should be treated like any other drug prescribed by a doctor.
“To identify a decriminalized zone is really a Band-Aid approach,” Sedgley said. “It’s really not solving the problem we have at hand. Let’s make it possible for physicians to dispense it in the normal ways we dispense drugs.”
Alex Pader, a 26-year-old wine pourer, was the only candidate who said he would entertain the idea of allowing dispensaries to operate in Napa without regulation.
“(Deregulation) definitely sounds like one of the options that would be more preferable,” said Pader, adding he’d like to put forth an ordinance in his first term.
“I’m definitely not for an outright prohibition. People should have access to it, it’s the state law,” he said. “I believe the country is moving in that direction, toward legality. It’s just about finding the right ordinance that best meets the citizens and the courts.”
Attorney Charlie Rose, 65, has an opposite view.
“The potential consequences are that the city officials that vote in favor of it are voting in favor of violating federal law,” he said, adding that he hopes federal law changes to allow the use of medical marijuana. “I think there’s a potential liability there on the part of the city for going along or facilitating an ordinance that could be found in violation of federal law.”
Rose said he has some concerns with the city’s current ordinance, in that it gives one dispensary a monopoly on the business. Such strict regulation has been challenged in some cases over the past year.
“The safest thing for the city to do is make sure you’re not in violation of federal law,” Rose said. If the city does not receive direction from the courts or federal government by the expiration of the moratorium, “you would probably have to repeal the ordinance,” Rose said.
Alfredo Pedroza, a 25-year-old credit union manager, said he wants to see how the issue will play out in court
“I would not want to put the city of Napa in a place that’s going to be harmful to us,” Pedroza said. “I think the legislation we have now is great. … I think it was a really smart move on the City Council’s part to take a step back to make sure the state and federal government are on the same page.”
Pedroza said he is paying close attention to the issues that would come with having a dispensary, particularly the potential for youth access to the drug.
“This is not just something where we should try it and see what happens,” Pedroza said. “We need to know exactly how it’s going to work and function and try to measure all the impacts, direct and indirect.”
As it stands, the city’s ordinance would allow up to two highly regulated dispensaries to open within city limits. Between October 2010 and October 2011, the city reviewed applications. Harmony Patients’ Center of Napa, Inc. was announced in August 2011 as the city’s preliminary preferred choice.
But before the city made its final determination, a state appellate court issued a ruling that caused the city to hold off. On Oct. 4, that state court overturned a Long Beach ordinance that had allowed a limited number of collectives, as Napa’s ordinance would have. The court said the ordinance conflicted with federal law that prohibits marijuana use, even though California law allows marijuana for medicinal purposes.
The city reacted by implementing an urgency moratorium on the ordinance in October, which it has since extended twice in hopes of delaying implementation until the courts or federal government provide clarification on how municipalities should regulate marijuana.