Petaluma police concerned over looming vote to legalize recreational pot

Petaluma is facing the possibility of a seismic change for the regulations affecting cannabis across California - recreational legalization.|

Less than one year after Petaluma adopted new rules allowing the limited cultivation of medical marijuana, the city is facing the possibility of a seismic change for the regulations affecting cannabis across California - recreational legalization.

A measure headed to the ballot this November would allow people 21 and older to possess an ounce of marijuana and grow up to six plants at home for their own use. Known as the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, or AUMA, the measure would prohibit smoking or otherwise using cannabis in a place open to the public.

The measure comes on the heels of Petaluma’s own rulemaking, which permitted limited cultivation for qualified medical marijuana patients. Passed in January, the ordinance set parameters for indoor and outdoor growing, with up to three mature plants allowed outdoors.

After police worked for months to help craft Petaluma’s ordinance, the city’s top law enforcement official expressed deep concern that the November ballot measure could undermine controls, local and otherwise, that have arisen in the two decades since California residents voted to legalize medical marijuana.

Opening the door to recreational use would lay out the welcome mat for bad actors to operate under the pretense of legitimacy in California, he said, while making it harder for individual communities to set their own policies on a substance that could wind up abused or in the hands of underage users.

“The short version is – there’s very little benefit that is going to come out of this legalization of the recreational use of marijuana,” said Petaluma Police Chief Patrick Williams.

Supporters of the measure, meanwhile, include a number of high-profile public officials, among them North Coast Rep. Jared Huffman, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and others. The California Democratic Party has endorsed the measure, and early polls show 60 percent of state voters would support it.

Proponents argue that the measure is the next logical step in California, and legislative estimates show legalization could save millions of dollars in criminal justice spending and generate up to $1 billion in new tax revenue.

“The time has come,” said Huffman, whose district produces 60 percent of the state’s cannabis crop.

Yet law enforcement has been more wary, as well as groups representing growers along the North Coast and elsewhere who question whether the measure would spur an inflow of large-scale cultivators that would put current small-scale growers out of business.

Having operated largely in the shadows for years, those cultivators are themselves increasingly coming out into the open, buoyed by a trio of state bills passed last year that regulate the production, taxation and distribution of marijuana grown for medical purposes.

Williams said those bills, which included one spearheaded by North Coast State Sen. Mike McGuire, were the product of a collaborative process involving growers, legislators, law enforcement, patient’s advocates and others, a framework that makes it hard for a single operator to take control “seed to sale.”

He argued that the November measure could make it easier for large operators to dominate the market, akin to the vertically integrated businesses of sophisticated crime syndicates.

“Organized crime cartels operate in that model. Now they are going to try and legitimize it, which is shocking,” he said.

Wider availability and use would mean more underage cannabis use in Petaluma, he argued, impacting academic performance and health care services. Theft from backyards and the public nuisance from odor would intensify under the law, he said.

Groups like the Sonoma County Growers Alliance and the California Growers Association are also looking closely at the impact of the measure. AUMA would set no limit on the size of a commercial marijuana growing operation.

“They blew it open,” said Hezekiah Allen, executive director of the 600-member Growers Association. Around half of the estimated 50,000 to 60,000 growers of medical and non-medical marijuana in California are small farmers, he said.

In January, Petaluma elected officials also moved to ban commercial cultivation within city limits, which is also permitted for local jurisdictions to do under the measure. Cities can also ban outdoor cultivation, but not indoor growing.

Petaluma has banned marijuana dispensaries within city limits since 2007.

A group of 18 elected officials, 32 organizations and 28 individuals back the measure, and donations to the AUMA campaign have totaled $2.5 million. Opponents, operating under the campaign “They Got It Wrong Again,” list endorsements from 20 organizations – largely law enforcement-related – and 23 elected officials.

(Press Democrat Staff Writer Guy Kovner contributed to this report. Contact Eric Gneckow at eric.gneckow@arguscourier.com. On Twitter @Eric_Reports.)

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