[420 Girl]

Want to open your own medical marijuana collective in unincorporated San Mateo County?

In a few weeks, you'll have to fill out an application, pay a $100 fee and submit to inspections to make sure your club is in line with all the terms of the county's new ordinance governing the collectives.

Buck those requirements and you may soon have the sheriff's office knocking at your door.

The county's first-ever ordinance governing pot clubs goes into effect on July 6, and county officials are trying to hash out how the process to license the collectives will work.

Aspiring distributors will likely have to fill out an application form, which has not been finalized but will include questions to make sure the collective is in line with the ordinance's various restrictions.

Under the law, which supervisors approved on April 28, cooperatives must be at least 1,000 feet away from a school, recreation center or youth center; install an alarm system and window bars; refrain from advertising or having any marijuana visible from the street; and must not distribute edible cannabis products, among other provisions.

Once the application is turned in, the sheriff's office and the county's building departments will inspect the collective's building for compliance, said Deborah Penny Bennett, a chief deputy county counsel.

If the collective passes that step, the county's three-member licensing board will have the final say on whether the club can operate.

The ordinance covers only the county's unincorporated area, though there are already at least three clubs in the North Fair Oaks neighborhood near Redwood City.

The founders of one club, the Universal Healthcare Cooperative, have criticized the ordinance for banning edibles and have been in ongoing talks with the county about the ordinance's terms.

Sheriff's office spokesman Tom Merson said officials have not been in contact with the other two clubs — Blue Heaven and the California Patients Cooperative.

The county plans to deliver applications to each of the cooperatives, though they won't be expected to have their licenses approved by July 6. The next county licensing board meeting is in early August, Merson said.

"After the license application forms are available, they would have a reasonable time to turn them in," Bennett said. "Certainly we would expect people to be under way with the application process by July 6."

If clubs refuse to fill out an application or comply with the ordinance's terms

"They'd be shut down," Merson said.

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