[420 Girl]

A split Gilroy city council rejected the idea of a medical marijuana ordinance, effectively nixing an application to open a dispensary here and possibly inviting a lawsuit from the applicants, council members and city officials said.

About 30 cannabis users, pastors, developers, lawyers, teachers and residents on both sides of the debate addressed the council for more than an hour Monday night. In the end, Mayor Al Pinheiro and Council members Bob Dillon, Cat Tucker and Dion Bracco voted against the idea of passing an ordinance regulating dispensaries. At the request of Councilman Perry Woodward, however, the body voted 4-3 - with Bracco, Dillon and Tucker against - to reconsider a draft ordinance in 90 days, after state courts establish more of a precedent.

State law permits medical marijuana dispensaries, but federal law prohibits cannabis across the board. Without a local law, City Attorney Linda Callon said staff are unable to process MediLeaf's business application submitted last May, but the applicants have argued they deserve due process in front of the planning commission, which can impose project-specific conditions on unorthodox business applications.

One of many cases winding its way through state courts came from the Second District Court of Appeals last month. The court decided to uphold a Claremont city ban on medical marijuana dispensaries, a move which calls into question if cities have the power to bar citizens from setting up shops, despite state laws permitting it. The Los Angeles County District Attorney also announced last week that prosecutors would pursue hundreds of "over the counter" collectives in the area that exchange marijuana for cash - a sticky situation Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Steve Lowney told the council it should avoid by working with District Attorney Dolores Carr on any proposed ordinance.

In the end, however, council members said they were swayed by an outpouring of e-mails and phone calls from constituents against the dispensary, and by a concern that a dispensary could invite legal interference from above. Council Perry Woodward said he worried about the exact opposite: a lawsuit from the applicants. Batzi Kuburovich would not say if he was prepared to sue the city and declined to comment further after Monday night's meeting.

Others involved readily offered their opinions, including Eric Madigan, a cannabis industry consultant and lobbyist who drove up from Los Angeles to partake in the "conservative" conversation, he said. Afterward, he said he was disappointed with the "fear tactics" and "talking points" voiced by some people opposed to the dispensary - including the argument that marijuana is a gateway drug - and he bristled at the notion that people with cannabis prescriptions can just drive to Santa Cruz or Oakland to get their medication.

"You wouldn't ask somebody who has diabetes to drive 50 miles to get their insulin," Madigan said. "I think this community needs to look up the definition of compassion."

Residents opposed to the dispensary countered that doctors are over-prescribing cannabis and pointed to an April 2009 report by the California Police Chiefs Association that revealed 52 percent of customers purchasing marijuana were between 17 and 30 years old and only 2.5 percent submitted a doctor's recommendation for AIDS, glaucoma or cancer, according patient records seized from six dispensaries during warrant searches.

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