[420 Girl]

The moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries in Highland will become permanent next month.

The City Council voted 5-0 Tuesday night to give final approval to an ordinance banning the dispensaries. There was no discussion.

The decision came nine months after the council first imposed a moratorium on the dispensaries and three months before the moratorium was due to expire.

The Highland City Council is one of a growing number of governments to ban dispensaries either permanently or temporarily. Among the others are San Bernardino, Yucaipa, Loma Linda, Beaumont and San Bernardino County. Earlier this month, the Calimesa City Council extended what had been a 45-day ban through Oct. 19, 2010.

California communities have been enacting bans after the U.S. Supreme Court declined in May to hear challenges by San Bernardino and San Diego counties to a law enacted by state voters in 1996 decriminalizing the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

In a report prepared for the Highland council last month, city planners noted that federal law still prohibits the possession and sale of marijuana. They also cited a California Police Chiefs Association report “detailing the negative secondary effects associated with medical marijuana dispensaries.”

Medical marijuana advocates have contended that dispensaries are legal under state law and that banning them will force medical marijuana patients with legal permits to buy marijuana on the black market.

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