The revisions to Ordinance 9.31, passed by the Board of Supervisors on March 23, 2010, expand a 7 page ordinance to 21 pages, make an already unconstitutional law worse by extending its application from individual patients to "collective cooperative cultivation" as the punitive framework of a regulatory system. Supervisors Colfax and Pinches voted against the measure.

The county's apparent intent by using a nuisance framework, rather than a land use framework like Arcata's ordinance, is to adopt a regulatory system that reduces patients' constitutional rights under administrative law as compared to criminal law by applying civil penalties rather than criminal charges.

MMMAB is strongly opposed to this over-reaching unconstitutional ordinance being applied to "collectives and cooperatives" with a punitive nuisance framework of 23 required hoops to jump through--"a trickbag of gotchas"--assuring very few will qualify for the 99-plant carrot.

Nuisance abatement, conducted under Administrative Law, breeds an atmosphere of fear.

Law enforcement may show up at any time without a warrant and without corroborating evidence. Draconian fees, fines, penalties are imposed without so much as a finding of wrongdoing. Law enforcement initiates the abatement order and makes the call on their terms despite lacking the authority and training in nuisance abatement to do so. Why is law enforcement in charge of civil nuisance abatement as well as criminal arrests?

Supervisor John McCowen's punishment plan is to reduce patients' constitutional rights and access to medicine as part of a regulatory package, like a plea bargain, where you give up certain things of value-- right to a jury trial, right to a warrant requirement for deputies to enter private property, etc., -- and the government gains greater control over patient associations in the regulatory future.

According to Pebbles Trippet, Secretary of MMMAB, "it is morally repugnant for cannabis patients' collective gardens to be categorized as 'public nuisances', comparable to litter, garbage and stream pollution -- a sub-class of people with built-in reduced constitutional rights -- and it is illegal to create a means to discriminate against patients in the absence of criminal charges & felony penalties.

9.31 undermines the rights of patients to collectively cultivate under state law and it undermines the right of association under the US Constitution.

A group of stakeholder plaintiffs are already litigating against the county in an action filed in Superior Court (9/11/09). Hill v Mendocino County is calendared May 14, 2010, for a hearing in Superior Court with Judge John Behnke.