SALEM, Ore. — A state agency has refused to provide a county sheriff and prosecutor in Oregon with a list of medical marijuana grow sites, marking the latest friction over marijuana between local and state officials.
On March 13, Oregon Health Authority official Carole Yann told Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel and Sheriff Shane Nelson that the law doesn’t permit the agency to provide the list.
Instead, local law enforcement — on a case-by-case basis — can verify the registration status of a site through a database or call the medical marijuana program managed by Yann, she said.
On Thursday, Hummel and Nelson challenged that justification and said they need the list to help identify illegal grow sites.
“I respectfully suggest that providing Sheriff Nelson and I with the addresses of medical marijuana grow sites does not run afoul of Oregon statutory law,” Hummel wrote to Yann in a letter that was also signed by Nelson.
On Tuesday, officials in another county sued the state in federal court, asserting that Oregon laws that made pot legal are pre-empted by a federal law that criminalizes it.
The Josephine County Board of Commissioners in December tried to ban or restrict commercial pot farming on rural residential lots, but the state Land Use Board of Appeals put the restrictions on hold.
The county has petitioned the Oregon Court of Appeals and sued in federal court.
In ballot measures, Oregon voters legalized medical marijuana in 1998 and recreational cannabis in 2014. Some jurisdictions in Oregon were allowed to opt out of allowing recreational marijuana businesses.
Deschutes County, in the high desert and mountains of Central Oregon, decided in 2016 to allow them after previously banning them in unincorporated areas.
But county commissioners said this week they may try to prohibit new marijuana businesses until the rules are better enforced.
