Pot advocates hit City Hall

Waving homemade signs affixed to broom handles and tiki torches, about 30 people showed up at Costa Mesa City Hall on Saturday to protest the city’s recent efforts to shut down local medical marijuana dispensaries.

“It’s just like if the city were to shut down all the Walgreens in town — where would people go to get their medicine?” said Jordan Wallick, a manager from MedMar Patient Care Collective.

MedMar is one of three Costa Mesa pot dispensaries the city ordered to close on Thursday. The dispensary has consulted an attorney and plans to fight to stay open, Wallick said. The dispensary also has collected about 2,000 signatures to overturn a 2005 city ban on pot dispensaries, he said.

“People need safe access, or they are going to get medicine on the street,” he said.

In February, Costa Mesa police served a search warrant on West Coast Wellness, a medical marijuana dispensary at 1260 Logan Ave., and arrested four people. The Orange County district attorney’s office has not announced yet whether it will charge the four.

The protesters stood outside in the rain in front of City Hall on Saturday, urging passing cars to honk their horns in support.

Medical marijuana user Julie Green, of Anaheim, carried a giant sign bearing the words “Prop 215,” at the protest, a reference to California’s 1996 ballot measure that legalized medical marijuana.

“Marijuana helps me a lot,” Green said. “I uses it for insomnia to help me sleep. It also helps with back pain that I have after I got in a car accident.”

Costa Mesa medical marijuana user Kim Carroll held up a sign that read, “Patients want collectives here.”

Carroll declined to say why he uses medical marijuana, but he said many patients will just buy pot through illegal channels, or drive further away to another clinic if the city shuts dispensaries down.

“If you take away my access, then I am going to have to drive when I don’t feel well to get my medicine,” Carroll said. “They’re just going to take out some law from 2005 and dust it off to shut these places down. It’s not right.”