[420 Girl]

Yucaipa city staff is recommending that the City Council turn a moratorium on the approval of medical marijuana dispensaries into an outright ban.

If the council agrees when it meets Monday night, Yucaipa will follow in the path of other Inland cities that have issued bans or moratoriums on their approval.

The Beaumont City Council banned medical marijuana dispensaries in April and one month later, set a 45-day moratorium on the approval of medical marijuana collectives and cooperatives. Staff told the council they needed time to research the issue. The council then agreed to extend the moratorium to one year in June.

Specifically, Beaumont's moratorium is on "the approval of the collective cultivation and/or distribution of medical marijuana within the city."

Also in June, the Hemet City Council established a one-year moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries. Loma Linda and Menifee did the same in late July.

And on Tuesday, San Bernardino County supervisors approved a one-year moratorium on dispensaries in the county.

Riverside County bans medical marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated areas.

This isn't the first time the Yucaipa City Council has tackled this issue. The council approved a one-year moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries in May 2008.

A staff report to the Yucaipa City Council states that although state Prop. 215, the Compassionate Use Act from 1996, gave qualified individuals the right to possess, use and cultivate marijuana for their own medicinal purposes, the distribution of marijuana remains illegal.

The report states that the city's municipal code prohibits issuing business licenses to entities that engage in illegal activity. According to staff, the result has been an indirect ban on dispensaries in Yucaipa.

The report concludes: "To ensure that this ban is not overlooked by staff responding to requests for information, it would be helpful to have language in the Municipal Code that would make it unequivocally clear as to the City's position on this issue, and so staff is proposing to add language to the Code in order to reduce the possibility of any misunderstandings in this regard."

The council meets at 6 p.m. in its chambers at Yucaipa City Council, 34272 Yucaipa Blvd.

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