ALAMEDA — The City Council has helped clear the way for a cannabis dispensary to open next door to a kung fu studio where more than 80 percent of the students are under age 18.

Changing the city’s cannabis rules so that martial arts studios are not defined as youth centers came despite critics saying the change would expose children to marijuana and encourage them to use it.

“No youth is going to be wandering into a dispensary, or going into a dispensary unaccompanied or accompanied,” Vice Mayor Malia Vella said Nov. 27, when the council approved amending the city’s municipal code. “That’s strictly prohibited. There’s no way around it.”

Fifty-three parents of students at the International Chi Institute, 1532 Webster St., signed a petition opposing the definition change after learning a cannabis dispensary may possibly open next-door at the corner of Webster and Haight Street, according to Joanna Lau, the kung fu studio’s manager. More than 80 percent of the studio’s students are minors, Lau said. Two churches and a regular farmers market also are nearby.

“The problem is child development,” Lau told the council. “It’s not about you selling them (cannabis) or not next to them. It’s about the perception.”

The city’s cannabis ordinance previously defined youth centers as places “primarily” used for social and recreational activities for minors. The centers now will be defined as places “exclusively” for youth activities. Debbie Potter, Alameda’s community development director, said the original wording was vague and difficult for city staff to regulate.

“This is not about strictly the dispensary proposed for Haight and Webster,” Potter said. “There are a number of martial arts studios on Park Street. If we don’t have clarity to this process, and if we don’t have a sense of a working definition, there is the potential to eliminate all of the future (dispensary) locations on Park Street.”

The strict security measures required for dispensaries mean young people will be protected after the change in the city’s rules, said Mark Hersman, an Alameda resident and advocate for legal cannabis. Michael McDonough, president of the Alameda Chamber of Commerce, said the organization does not support young people using cannabis.

“But we do support the right of small business owners to conduct business in a legal way in a legal industry,” McDonough said, adding that the change was necessary for dispensaries to have places to open.

Don Sherratt, a retired Alameda teacher and school administrator, told the council he was “totally against” changing the definition of youth centers under the city rules.

“I am not opposed to medical marijuana,” Sherratt said. “But I am opposed to any dispensary being located near kids’ activities.”

Mayor Trish Spencer, who used cannabis while undergoing treatment for breast cancer, said people must recognize the substance’s benefits.

“My position is we need to remove the stigma,” Spencer said. “Why? Because many of you probably are extremely fortunate and have not had the personal experience of enduring cancer.”

Council members Frank Matarrese and Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft voted against changing the definition of youth centers. The council vote was on the amendment’s first reading.

Ashcraft said the council was “moving the goal posts” after also amending its cannabis ordinance just earlier this month, when it changed a requirement on the separation of retail dispensaries and cannabis nurseries from the location of youth centers and tutoring centers, reducing it to 600 feet from 1,000 feet.