Call it a standing room everywhere meeting: last Wednesday, Oct. 9, the Yorba Linda planning commission voted to approve an ordinance banning medical marijuana dispensaries and cultivation centers within city limits.
But other than the five commissioners in attendance, who passed the measure three votes to two, there was nobody there to notice. Not a single speaker addressed the commission on either side of the issue, which isn't surprising since there was nobody in the audience.
And stranger still, there aren't even any dispensaries currently operating in Yorba Linda; the only one that tried, as the Weekly previously reported, lasted just a month, from January to Febrary 2010, before being forced to shut down.
]
If passed by the city council, the proposed ordinance would amend Chapter 18 of the Yorba Linda Municipal Code by adding section 18.20.15 to “specifically ban medical marijuana dispensaries and the commercial cultivation of medical marijuana” in Yorba Linda. Again, this is despite the fact that there are no medical marijuana facilities operating in Yorba Linda, and despite the fact that the city already has a municipal code prohibiting any business that violates federal law.
Perhaps Yorba Linda is simply trying to stay one step ahead of any collectives that think that the tide has turned again in the war on marijuana and might be thinking of opening shop in town. Then again, this is Yorba Linda, folks, a Quaker town that until relatively recently (in historical terms) didn't even allow restaurants to serve alcohol. Those days are gone, but Yorba Linda is still so conservative that you won't even find a single bar within city limits–much less a pot club.
Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).