Vista will wait until 2018 general election to decide on medical marijuana

Vista voters will get a chance to decide whether to allow medical marijuana dispensaries to operate legally in town — but not until November 2018.

A petition effort to let voters weigh in on allowing pot shops gathered enough signatures to land on the ballot in Vista’s next general election, but fell short of the signatures needed to force the city to hold a special election, according to county Registrar of Voters findings released by Vista on Monday.

Vista currently forbids dispensaries. The proposed initiative, financially backed by people with ties to the industry, calls for allowing one dispensary for every 10,000 residents, which would be at least 10 dispensaries. The initiative also would allow the city to license, regulate and tax dispensaries at 7 percent.

[related_articles location=”left” show_article_date=”false” article_type=”automatic-primary-section” curated_ids=””]Nearly 8,000 people signed the petition circulated by the group Vistans for Safe Community Access. But, by the registrar’s estimate, only about 5,600 signatures were valid Vista voters.

While that count lands the matter on the ballot in the general election, it’s short of the 6,326 needed to force a costly special election — which, at an estimated $350,000, would be more than tenfold what the city spent on its general election last year.

Attorney Josh Hamlin, who is a spokesman for Vistans for Safe Community Access, said in an email that the group “is reviewing this matter on behalf of the voters that petitioned for this initiative. We intend to pursue this matter to the fullest extent possible.”

The failure by the citizens’ initiative to force a special election gives the City Council time to throw a counter punch.

City Council members have criticized the citizens’ initiative as too permissive. They fear it would allow far too many dispensaries in too many differing locations throughout the city, and that it would make it harder to deter or shut down illegal shops.

In the face of the citizens’ initiative, the City Council recently signaled a willingness to consider changing the rules to allow perhaps two or three dispensaries to operate (including delivery service), though with heavy restrictions.

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The City Council has options, including instituting either the citizens’ initiative or creating its own, more restrictive ordinance before the November 2018 general election. Even if the council creates an ordinance, the citizens’ initiative likely will still land on the fall 2018 ballot — and its passage would override the rules on the books.

Aside from the dueling proposals, another one is newly joining the mix. The Association of Cannabis Professionals qualified to start circulating petitions for an initiative that would regulate zoning for cannabis businesses in Vista. The group has until Feb. 20 to turn in the petition.

Allowing dispensaries would mark a complete reversal for Vista, which since 2013 has spent upward of $1 million to shut down a few dozen of them illegally operating in the city. Vista has also taken the unusual step of going after some store operators, staffers and even landlords in criminal court for misdemeanor violations of city zoning regulations.

The ballot box battle comes as public attitudes about marijuana have shifted toward acceptance. Medicinal use of marijuana has been legal in California for more than two decades, and last year California voters passed a proposition legalizing it for recreational use.

And a recent city-commissioned poll of 400 Vista voters found that more than half of them backed the idea of allowing dispensaries to open in the city.

The Council will take up the marijuana matters — the initiative and its own potential ordinance — at its Sept. 26 meeting.

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