Bud’s Blog: Corning’s THC dispensary thrives despite zoning conflict with city

By Bud Green
CalPotNews.com

CORNING – At Tehama Herbal Collective, business as usual is pretty unusual.

The aptly named THC dispensary remains open despite a moratorium passed by the Corning City Council just days after their opening last summer. Since then, police Chief Tony Cardenas has checked in almost daily to write THC a citation for operating a non-permitted business in a commercial zone. The pink slips of paper trail down a wall in THC's lobby, and with a $250 fine per ticket, the potential penalty for non-compliance is well past $50,000 – and still climbing.

This doesn't seem to worry THC manager Jeff Fletcher on a sweltering Tuesday afternoon. A September hearing in Tehama County Superior Court is scheduled on the zoning violations, and Fletcher says the losing side is expected to appeal regardless of who prevails in Round One.

“The city's in a gray area about it. They're getting advice from their part-time (contract) attorney, and he says he's following other court cases in California,” Fletcher says. As for THC, they've been advised that they're in full compliance with state laws governing medical marijuana dispensaries.

The storefront itself is easy to miss as one drives down Corning's main drag, Solano Street. Once inside, first-time patients are greeted in a nicely appointed lobby where they complete the paperwork for collective membership. “It's pleasant, a nice safe atmosphere for a wide variety of patients to get medicine,” says Fletcher.

A steady stream of customers flows through the front door, and returning patients are quickly ushered to a back room stocked with bud-filled glass jars, seeds, clones and other products. With more than 1,800 collective members, THC now serves between 75 and 100 patients per day with few complaints outside City Hall. Compare and contrast that with neighboring Butte County, where most dispensaries remain closed after a law-enforcement blitz last week. Fletcher estimates there are 6,000 people with Prop. 215 scripts in Tehama County, roughly 10 percent of the rural county's entire population.

“Our whole family is from Tehama County, we're born and raised in Tehama County, and we've been about the fight for medical marijuana since 1996,” Fletcher says. Forming the THC collective “wasn't about money, getting rich or anything. It was about providing a safe environment for people to get their medicine.”

THC carries a wide variety of bud supplied by longtime growers who must know a thing or two. Its Bubba Kush captured third place in the indica category at the first Medical Cannabis Cup in San Francisco, earning them a medal, “bragging rights” and a slice of California cannabis history. The BK was quite popular with customers even before the competition, Fletcher says – “the feedback on that medeicine is just remarkable” – so he wasn't surprised that it stood out from more than 40 other entries.

“Corning is a small city, but a lot of us have the background and experience in growing medicine for the past 10 years,” he explains. “We were entering that to show the quality of medicine that can come from the collective.”

“We're always trying to understand the patients' needs, so the more feedback we get on certain strains, the more we grow that type of medicine,” Fletcher adds. Which means, as a practical matter, that THC can run out of Bubba Kush on a Tuesday due to high demand, but that more is on order and plenty of other products are available for patients in the meantime. That's how they roll at THC.

Disclosure: The author, himself a Prop. 215 patient, joined the THC collective prior to interviewing Fletcher and writing this article. No compensation was sought or provided in exchange.