Royal Oak Passes Strict Limits on Medical Marijuana

Royal Oak officials voted for strict limits on the use and distribution of medical marijuana.

The vote left advocates of medical marijuana vowing to sue the city as they left Royal Oak City Hall but it gave opponents of the drug less than a complete ban they’d hoped to see passed.

“We made it very clear that someone using medical marijuana in Royal Oak would not be subject to criminal prosecution,” City Commissioner Chuck Semchena said.

“This new ordinance merely prohibits the growing or distribution of marijuana,” Semchena, a longtime foe of medical marijuana, said today. Still, the vote was a deep disappointment to City Commissioner Jim Rasor, who joined Mayor Jim Ellison in opposing the strict limits.

“I have no doubt that we will find ourselves in court, spending taxpayer money to defend our indefensible and illegal action, instead of spending that money on police officers and other necessary city expenses,” Rasor said today.

“I think we would’ve been sued no matter what we did,” Royal Oak City Manager Don Johnson said today.

The ordinance change stopped short of mirroring a proposal that medical marijuana users feared might pass and ban the drug entirely. That proposal was one that Semchena favored last year, and which the seven-person Royal Oak City Commission tentatively passed last fall at what is called the first reading of a new ordinance. It was based on the so-called Livonia model and, in effect, would have banned any use of medical marijuana, City Attorney Dave Gillham told commissioners last year.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan has sued Livonia, along with Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills, for passing such ordinances, on behalf of a Birmingham couple who said they have state-approval cards for treating their health conditions with medical marijuana but fear using or growing the drug in the three communities. South Lyon also has a similar de facto ban and the township was sued this month by a resident who has a state-approval card for using the drug, Grosse Pointe attorney Paul Tylenda, who said he is representing the man at no charge, said Monday.

Royal Oak, although it passed a more lenient rule than the Livonia model, can still expect to be sued, Tylenda said Monday night, after joining a 90-minute stream of public speakers to the City Commission.

The 4-3 vote for the new limits, contained in amendments to the city’s zoning ordinance, modified the Livonia model to allow consumption of medical marijuana in Royal Oak, so long as the drug is “obtained in compliance with the state act,” City Manager Johnson said.

“But it is not allowing cultivation or distribution of medical marijuana in the city,” he said. To comply with the Royal Oak ordinance change requires residents to travel outside the city to raise medical marijuana or obtain it from a state-approved caregiver, then return to their homes to consume it, Johnson said.

Asked whether that could make it more costly, more arduous and more risky for residents to obtain the drug, Johnson said: “No matter what you do, it’s still illegal under federal law.”

The city’s 120-day moratorium on establishing medical-marijuana facilities, set to expire Feb. 13, remains in place until the ordinance change takes effect in Feb. 3, but the moratorium now is moot because the new rule forbids any establishments, such as dispensaries or compassion clubs, city officials said.

The commissioners’ vote did not follow a controversial recommendation by the Royal Oak Planning Commission to allow state-approved patients to grow the drug in their own homes, and to allow state-approved caregivers to grow it in their patients’ homes, but which also prohibited any distribution or growing facilities in the city.

South Oakland Boys and Girls Club Executive Director Brett Tillander said last week that he and 40 other community leaders strongly opposed to the Planning Commission’s recommendation submitted a letter of protest to the city.