Medical Marijuana Providers in Shoreline Get a Reprieve

Thanks to a 4-2 vote by the Shoreline City Council, on Monday night, Laura Healy and her Green Hope Patient Network and other medical marijuana facilities will continue to operate in the city of Shoreline, albeit with some restrictions.

Green Hope, a non-profit patient-to-patient medical marijuana network, and other similar organizations have faced business license revocations, in some cases limitations on where they could be located, a confusing state law that went into effect this July and the possibility of federal law crushing the whole concept of medical marijuana.

But for awhile, they will get a bit of a reprieve in Shoreline.

About a dozen people, many of them suffering from various ailments from cancer, to irritable bowel syndrome, bone spurs or arthritis and testified at the public hearing praising Green Hope and Green Cure in Shoreline as safe places where they could get their medicine.

They spoke out support in favor of the ordinance that allowed collective gardens or cannabis delivery facilities to operate within 1,000 feet of one another and striking an amendment that prevented substituting members of collective garden in less than 15 days. The latter provision would have meant that only 10 people could be served a medical marijuana facility at one time.

Councilmembers Chris Roberts, Chris Eggen, Doris McConnell and Terry Scott supported a motion to strike the limitations enabling the facilities to serve as many patients as they wanted. Mayor Keith McGlashan and deputy mayor Will Hall voted not to support the change from the ordinance as proposed by city legal staff.

“We plan on opening tomorrow,” said Patrick Gahn, director of Green Cure, which operates at the corner of 145th St. and Aurora Ave. N. in the former Golden Nugget Casino location.

It wasn’t a complete victory for the medical marijuana providers—the new law also bans certain medical marijuana products such as “edibles,” or food products with marijuana and lotions.

The original moratorium that the Shoreline City Council passed tightened up some of the language and zoning for areas where collective gardens can exist in Shoreline. The moratorium mainly focuses on keeping collective gardens out of residential neighborhoods and 1,000 feet away from schools.

Restrictions went further by limiting only one collective garden per tax parcel. This limits the number of collective gardens that exist in Shoreline given the city's commercial area’s size.

Continue to follow updated, and in-depth coverage of the medical marijuana issue on Patch.