|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
New regulations for marijuana-related activities are set to take effect in Danville next month as part of town officials’ response to statewide voters approving recreational marijuana use under Proposition 64 in November.
The Town Council gave final approval last week to a local ordinance that prohibits all marijuana sales, delivery, processing and outdoor cultivation within the town limits while allowing up to six marijuana plants to be grown indoors at residences for personal use.
The Danville ordinance, scheduled to take effect Feb. 9, features a series of rules for indoor cultivation inspired by specific regulations approved in Pittsburg and Martinez.
The regulations include stipulations such as the property must be primarily used as a residence, and marijuana cultivation can’t been a home occupation. The property owner must give written consent allowing marijuana growing, and the cultivation is limited to six marijuana plants per home, regardless of how many people live there.
The cultivation can occur only inside a home or accessory structure that has adequate mechanical locking or electronic security systems installed. The grow area cannot be accessible to people younger than 21 years old, and it must have a portable, up-to-code fire extinguisher.
Also, indoor grow lights must not exceed 1,000 watts per light, gas products (such as butane, propane and natural gas) and generators can’t be used in the cultivation process. Grows in fully enclosed and secure structures must have a ventilation and filtration system to prevent marijuana plant odors from going outside.
The new Danville ordinance largely extended the town’s previous medical-marijuana rules to recreational marijuana. The town formally prohibited medical marijuana cultivation, delivery and processing in January 2016 after already having a dispensary ban on the books.
The key difference is the new ordinance allows indoor cultivation, as Prop 64 protects people’s right to grow up to six plants in their home as long as the cultivation area is locked and can’t be seen from a public place.
The new state law allowed cities to retain regulatory control over marijuana sales, delivery, processing, commercial growing and outdoor personal cultivation, and they could “reasonably regulate” indoor growing so long as the six-plant personal cultivation limit wasn’t infringed upon, according to Danville city attorney Rob Ewing.
Prop 64 — the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, which California voters approved Nov. 8 with 57.1% support — legalized the use and possession of recreational marijuana for adults 21 years of age and older and directed the creation of a state regulatory system for the sale, cultivation and processing of marijuana and related products.
The state is required to create a licensing board to regulate marijuana-related activities by Jan. 1, 2018, Ewing said.
The council last month indicated support for revisiting the delivery debate for Danville in the future after the state establishes its post-Prop 64 licensing program and other laws.
Councilman Robert Storer and the Danville Planning Commission encouraged the council to allow delivery in Danville, with Storer citing the needs of ill patients who need marijuana to ease pain but can’t travel to out-of-area dispensaries. Ultimately Storer sided with his colleagues in the delivery ban.
The Danville marijuana ordinance was formally adopted in a unanimous vote as part of the council’s consent agenda during a morning meeting Jan. 10. All five council members had endorsed the proposal during a public hearing and 45-minute discussion Dec. 20.
Some of our lawmakers and politicians are corrupt and answer to the will of big corporations rather than the will of the people they’re elected to serve. What scares them is losing the money from big corporations for private prisons, alcoholic beverages and pharmaceutical drugs currently lining their pockets and keeping them in office.
Figures from the Center for Disease Control on numbers of deaths per year in the USA:
* Prescription Drugs: 237,485 + 5000 traffic fatalities
* Tobacco: 390,323
* Alcohol: 88,013 + 16,000 traffic fatalities
* Cocaine: 4,906
* Heroin: 7,200
* Aspirin: 466
* Acetaminophen (Tylenol): 179
* Marijuana: 0, none, not a single fatal overdose in all medical history and almost no traffic problems.
So, which is safer???? Legalize, regulate and TAX!
Thank you, leaders of the Town of Danville, for your wonderful work and proactive efforts to keep the community safe and desirable for all!
This is a brave move and the correct one, but I’m sure some activists will criticize you heavily. But know that you made the right decision for the protection of the town. The proof in the pudding,so to speak, will be a couple years down the road when you compare the community to others that openly embraced the dopers. You’ll see the difference in the safe quality of life then! Thank you Danville!
New medical study reported on news 2 days ago in which researchers found those smoking pot has huge increase in developing severe mental illness. Former medical studies showed regular pot users also had 8 percent drop in I.Q and that pot was gateway drug to harder drugs including heroin and crack. Use common sense, we all know smoking is bad for your health, lungs, respiratory system, so why would any logical person think smoking anything would be good for your health, or secondary smoke good for those around you?
Thank you Danville Council for putting the toughest regulations in place to limit the spread of this drug.
Yes, thank you Town of Danville for your strong stand!
It’s interesting in the one post above that blames legal prescription drugs, supposidly pushed by big companies, for death …. But please keep in mind that the marijuana industry is now a billion dollar industry making a lot of new millionaires by pushing this dope on everyone else. They have an ulterior motive of money and downplay any side effect….. Which are many…. And we will soon see the sad results. Danville, I’m proud of you!
I’m not a marijuana user, but I don’t like when “facts” are thrown out without proper research.
First off, Danville just legalized the growing of up to 6 marijuana plants by private citizens while banning the sales and delivery of marijuana. Now instead of buying a drug with a known strength, people can grow their own and find out how strong it is by trial an error. Sounds safe.
Also, banning sales and delivery won’t have any affect on the ways things have been. Sales and distribution have happened in the past and will still happen. Drinking under the age of 21 was illegal when I was in H.S. yet one of my classmates killed himself in a car wreck. After drinking. In Danville.
Yes, there was a report put out last week that looked at over 100 marijuana research studies, but it didn’t say that that marijuana causes mental illness. The study it referred to said, “Marijuana gives people with schizophrenia a quick rush but worsens their psychotic symptoms within a few hours, a new study reveals.” It also stated that, “Oddly enough, some evidence suggests that a second marijuana component called cannabidiol actually has antipsychotic effects.” Maybe if the federal government allowed research on the positive effects of marijuana in the past there’d be some useful drugs using cannabidiols on the market.
Another recent study on twins where on twin used marijuana and another didn’t seems to debunk the claim that marijuana lowers the IQ. “Marijuana users lost about four IQ points over the course of the study. But their abstinent twin siblings showed a similar pattern of decline, suggesting that the loss of mental sharpness was due to something other than pot.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/37779968/ns/health-addictions/t/pot-smoking-can-worsen-schizophrenia/#.WH6K81MrL3h
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/twins-study-finds-no-evidence-marijuana-lowers-iq-teens
Thank you Danville Town Council.
Previously, you had said you were considering allowing marijuana deliveries into Danville. I’m glad you changed your mind.
Danville is a family community. If people want drugs, they should go someplace else. Drug users are not welcome here.
“Chris from San Ramon”: This topic concerns the Danville Town Council passing legislation that affects residents of the Town of Danville. You live in San Ramon. If you favor an increase in pot usage, please lobby your own city, San Ramon, and stop budding(no pun intended) into the affairs of Danville residents. By the way, it is interesting you failed to address the medical studies that have been documented for over 50 years concerning the ill affects of smoking on the lungs, respiratory system, and second hand smoke on those around them. Why would any sane person suggest we do anything that increases the number of people who smoke, and increase the number of people who are affected by second hand smoke, whether from tobacco or marijuana? Let me guess, you consider yourself “an environmentalist”, and you support regulating how often cows burp and pass gas as it affects the environment, but you see no problem in increasing the number of people who light up a joint?
What goes on in Danville affects all of us in this county. And those of us who shop, go to events, art museum,theatre, library etc affect the town of danville. Imagine how business would be affected if only “residents” supported them. So to American of Danville , we all have an interest in council action and will continue to comment. BTW how many businesses in the town limits are actually owned by residents? I don’t know the answer but I do know quite a few whose owners live elsewhere.
American,
The negative health effects from smoking marijuana is found to be on par with smoking cigarettes which is why edible products as well as other non-burning alternatives to burning marijuana exist and have for decades.
As for lobbying any town about pot usage, all that I have lobbied for is for people to have all the facts before coming to a judgment. Frankly I’m not worried about pot, not like opiates and the other stuff kids steal from their parents and order online.
Here’s a good article on the opioid issue:
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/11/12/deadly-counterfeit-opioid-pills-fooling-experts-killing-californians/
What a great discussion! But it begs me to keep circling around a few questions:
Why is alcohol cherished, celebrated, venerated, invited into almost every establishment and every celebratory event, considered a societal norm, yet it is toxic and potentially dangerous?
Why are people so afraid of what they don’t know…
“Marijuana was used as medicine in ancient China, and in fact it was considered an accepted medicine by U.S. doctors until 1942, when the nonprofit U.S. Pharmacopeia removed it from its list of drugs deemed effective.” (Time Magazine 29 Aug 2016 – “Post -Traumatic Marijuana” by Mark Thompson. The article is about how we can finally explore how marijuana works, what the potential is for all of its’ different components, how scientists are scrambling to study its effects and how it is alleviating so much pain for so many people with PTSD and hundreds of other ailments without potentially devastating side effects.
Where am I coming from? I wished I liked marijuana, but I don’t. I prefer a nice glass of wine when I want to unwind after a long day of work. That brings me to the last question circling in my head…. Why are some things that are “bad” for us banned and others are not? Why is it ok to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol, but not okay to indulge in marijuana, which has been found to be less harmful and actually useful? I would think our main objective as a community is to work together to be safe, happy, successful and productive despite our human nature inclinations to indulge in the nefarious; and to be smart enough to explore the potential good in anything. Otherwise, maybe we should put all those other indulgences on the band wagon, too.