Medical marijuana dispensaries and marijuana delivery services should be banned along with the sale and distribution of marijuana within unincorporated Orange County, according to a county staff recommendation to the Board of Supervisors.

The recommendation, which would impose a $1,000 fine per day for violations, is up for consideration at Tuesday’s board meeting.

Currently, Orange County does not have any laws on the books for regulating the permitting or establishment of medical marijuana collectives. The California attorney general set up guidelines that require dispensaries register as a nonprofit, obtain a seller’s permit and supply security, among other conditions.

The county’s lack of action to regulate medical marijuana dispensaries has created an opportunity in unincorporated Orange County where cooperatives are setting up shop without strict rules and regulations, county CEO Tom Mauk told supervisors in September.

“OC Public Works believes any land use permitting of medical marijuana stores, collectives and/or cooperatives would be a public health, safety and welfare concern and most likely lead to unequitable concentration of these uses with specific Orange County unincorporated areas,” OC Public Works DirectorJess Carbajal wrote in his recommendation.

The OC Public Works recommendation to ban medical marijuana collectives is echoed by Sheriff’s Department position that the bulk of collectives are selling to the general public, and therefore breaking California law.

Federal law bans the use, possession and sale of marijuana

Law enforcement officials accuse many dispensaries of hiding behind the guise of providing medicine to patients to operate highly profitable businesses that can pull in millions of dollars of profit a year.

Crimes at dispensaries are often not reported to law enforcement, Sheriff’s Lt. Adam Powell wrote in an Oct. 7 letter to Public Works, as a way to protect the business from detection.

But dispensaries’ large inventories of cash and drugs have made them attractive targets for armed robbers and burglars.

Four men in ski masks tunneled into a Laguna Hills dispensary from a neighboring business in April, Powell wrote. The dispensary had been broken into two weeks before, but the owner didn’t report it.

The owners of a Westminster medical marijuana dispensary were the victims of an armed takeover robbery, but did not report it and refused to cooperate with police, Powell wrote.

Marijuana storefronts have added bullet resistant glass, fortified locked doors and sophisticated surveillance equipment. Orange County dispensary owners have also been the target of home invasion robberies.

(Source: ocregister.com)