California NORML Challenges Tehama County Anti-Cultivation Ordinance

May 28th, 2010 – In a lawsuit sponsored by California NORML, Tehama County patients are challenging a local ordinance that would drastically limit their right to grow medical marijuana.

Tehama’s is the most restrictive of a rapidly growing number of anti-cultivation measures that have recently been proposed by local officials hostile to medical marijuana. The Tehama ordinance declares it a public nuisance to grow marijuana anywhere within 1,000 feet of a school, school bus stop, church, park, or youth-oriented facility; restricts gardens to no more than 12 mature or 24 total plants on parcels of 20 acres or less; requires outdoor gardens to be surrounded by an opaque fence at least six feet high and located 100 feet or more from the property boundaries; and requires every patient garden to be registered with the county health services agency for a fee to be determined.

Patients are suing to have the ordinance declared unconstitutional on the grounds that it violates patients’ Prop. 215 right to cultivate medicine for themselves. California NORML attorneys argue that local governments cannot legally declare activities that are protected by state law to be nuisances.

“They can’t take everyone’s rights away,” says attorney Edie Lerman, who is representing the Tehama patients. California law states patients can have whatever they need for themselves and for collectives.” Lerman warns patients to expect a long battle, as the case is likely to go to the appellate level.

Several other California communities have proposed measures to limit personal cultivation. In another lawsuit filed by Ms. Lerman, Mendocino County patients are challenging an ordinance that limits patient cultivation to 25 plants per parcel, regardless of the number of patients. The ordinance was recently amended to let collectives apply for licenses for larger gardens of up to 99 plants under certain conditions.

“The right to cultivate is fundamental to Prop. 215’s mandate that ‘seriously ill Californians have the right to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes,'” says California NORML Director Dale Gieringer, a co-author of Prop. 215.

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