Nevada City council votes 3-2 to ban medical marijuana dispensaries

The Nevada City council voted 3-2 tonight to draft an ordinance that would ban medical marijuana dispensaries from city limits.

Councilors Sally Harris, David McKay and Robert Bergman voted for the ban. Barbara Coffman and Reinette Senum voted against the motion.

The council had voted three times previously for a moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries after Nevada City resident Harry Bennett applied for a business license to open a dispensary.

Harris and McKay both said they believed Nevada City was too small for a dispensary. Coffman called a vote to ban a dispensary a "cowardly act" because it would deny residents with prescriptions the chance to get their marijuana at a safe and local place. Senum said she was not persuaded by arguements that a dispensary would add to the area's drug problem. Bergman, who seemed to be arguing for the council to study the matter in more detail, did not explain in the meeting why he voted for the ban.

Prop. 215, which voters approved in 1996, allows medical marijuana users to grow their own marijuana or form cooperatives to grow and distribute the product among members. There are hundreds of dispensaries in the state, including one in Colfax in neighboring Placer County.