[420 Girl]

Riverside could become one of the only Inland cities where patients could legally obtain medical marijuana, if registered nurse and activist Lanny Swerdlow opens a patient collective in September as he is determined to do.

Swerdlow threw down the gauntlet last week, telling city officials he will open a facility, "and you do not have the right to prevent us from doing so."

Riverside officials disagree, maintaining that the city's general plan bans any place that distributes medical marijuana.

The patient collective would be a next step for Swerdlow, a resident of Whitewater in eastern Riverside County who in 2008 opened THCF Medical Clinic in Riverside. At the clinic, people can seek a doctor's recommendation for medical marijuana. Although the drug remains illegal under federal law, state law allows patients to legally possess and use it if a doctor recommends it.

But the clinic doesn't dispense any drugs, and Palm Springs appears to be the only Inland city where zoning allows collectives to offer marijuana. That can force patients to travel long distances to get their medicine or buy it illegally, said Wanda Smith, a Phelan resident who has used medical marijuana for two years.

Smith, 58, said her medical concerns include sleep apnea, asthma, anxiety and neuropathy, a nerve disorder she likened to "knives going in my toes and my feet and my legs." Marijuana eases Smith's pain and doesn't make her sleep constantly like the morphine she took for six years, she said.

A collective would allow Smith to get her medicine safely and legally, she said.

"The closest one for me (would be) Riverside, because there's nothing up here in the desert," Smith said. "Everybody that I know up here, they're looking for a place to get it where they don't have to get it on the black market."

Marijuana dispensaries are banned by many Inland cities. Collectives and cooperatives, according to 2008 guidelines from state Attorney General Jerry Brown, must be open only to qualified patients or primary caregivers who become members.

The Riverside collective Swerdlow plans to open would be like a "farmers market for marijuana," where patients who legally grow the drug could make it available to other patients, he said. Swerdlow would not disclose the collective's proposed location but said it will be near the THCF clinic, which is at 647 Main Street.

Swerdlow said collectives are legal under Brown's guidelines and the law, and the city can't simply zone them out of existence.

But a letter Swerdlow said he received from city planners in January counters that city zoning rules ban dispensaries, collectives and co-ops.

City Attorney Greg Priamos reiterated that position Wednesday in a phone interview.

"The simple fact is that a dispensary or a co-op is specifically disallowed by under the general plan that has been adopted," Riverside City Councilman Mike Gardner said. Swerdlow's clinic is in Gardner's ward, and the collective likely would be also.

Gardner has mixed feelings on medical marijuana generally, he said, but the city's rules are clear.

City officials likely will wait to see whether Swerdlow opens a collective next month before deciding how to address it, Gardner said. A response could come from city code enforcement or police or the county district attorney's office, the councilman said.

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