[420 Girl]

CO - The role home-based businesses would play in Fort Collins' fledgling medical marijuana industry is proving to be a contentious issue.

Regulations proposed by city staff members would prohibit medical marijuana dispensaries, or MMDs, as home occupations. Growing marijuana also would be banned in residential areas except to meet the medical needs of individual patients as allowed under state law.

Members of the city's Planning and Zoning Board, which make recommendations to the City Council on land-use issues, were divided Thursday on whether to support the home-occupation restriction.

Member Dave Lingle said requiring someone who is caring for a few patients to have separate locations to grow and dispense marijuana - as is proposed in the regulations - would cause undue financial hardship on caregivers. Small operations should not be completely disallowed, he said.

"I have not been convinced there is a problem there," Lingle said.

But board Chairman Butch Stockover said residential areas should be protected from marijuana-related businesses and the potential for crime and other issues.

Some residential grows have been targeted by burglars looking for drugs and money, officials say.

When it comes to protecting neighborhoods, Stockover said, "I look at this as an all or nothing."

Limiting where businesses may operate will not keep patients from getting the medicine they need, he said.

"I don't think we are excluding anyone from the right to seek this service, and I don't think we are raising the cost to anybody by doing this," Stockover said.

Board member Andy Smith said marijuana businesses should be treated the same as other types of business, many of which are not allowed in residential areas.

The board was asked to comment on the proposed regulations before City Council takes them up at its March 2 meeting. The council hopes to establish regulations on medical marijuana growers and dispensaries by the time a moratorium on issuing licenses for marijuana-related businesses ends March 31.

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