“I have a pretty liberal view of cannabis, and I find it odd that (buying it) is more restrictive than buying a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of Jack Daniel’s,” Gordon Huether said before voting with three other planners in favor of more lenient zoning. “I partake of both, but they both do more damage than cannabis.”

Commissioner Alex Myers, a Napa attorney, recused himself because of clients he said “have a vested interest in this matter.”

Only three applications to open cannabis-based businesses have come before Napa under its new ordinance. While city officials have accepted two of them, the fate of the third largely depends on softening existing barriers, said Alicia Rose, who is pursuing a 1,000-square-foot HerbaBuena outlet on Enterprise Way in the south of town.

Rose’s future shop would be less than 1,000 feet from a corner of the Napa Golf Course that forms part of Kennedy Park – a youth gathering place under Proposition 64, the voter-approved 2016 state law opening the way to marijuana sales without a doctor’s recommendation. However, the Asylum Slough cuts through the area and would block access from that direction.

“There is no way you can walk across the slough to get to that property,” said Rick Tooker, community development director.