Bryan Wilcox used to have a six-figure job. He used to have a house, car and all the accoutrements that come with a typical life in suburbia. Then the economy took a turn for the worse. Like many, he said, he had to make some changes, but he took a decidedly atypical direction. A few years ago, Wilcox’s cousin was dying of cancer. Given four months to live, she survived for two years, a miracle he said she attributed to the regular treatments of medicinal marijuana. Realizing that this was something that real patients had a real need for, Wilcox said he made the decision to open a medicinal marijuana cooperative to provide for his patients and make ends meet. So, a little less than a year ago, he opened Avail Cooperative at 909 Prospect St. “I’ve tried to keep to the idea of a true non-profit,” he said. “I’ll lose money before I raise prices.” Wilcox may have something else to lose if certain citizens and city planners get their way. On Jan. 20, much to the chagrin of more than half of those in attendance, the San Diego City Planning Commission voted 3-2 to recommend to the City Council a new ordinance placing harsher restrictions on where medicinal marijuana cooperatives can operate. The ordinance, if it passes City Council, will limit dispensaries to five specific industrial and limited commercial zones. It also states that dispensaries must be located at least 1,000 feet from schools, playgrounds, libraries, child-care facilities, youth facilities, churches, parks and other dispensaries. Given these new guidelines, every dispensary in La Jolla would have to close its doors. One of Avail’s “bud tenders,” who prefers to be identified only as Shamus, is concerned for the 1,200 patients that Avail sees regularly —about half of whom live in La Jolla. “We have one patient who is in a wheelchair,” he said. “You can tell that he’s really in pain and he really benefits from his treatments here. He has to ride the bus because he doesn’t really have people to take care of him. Where will he go if we’re all shut down?” There are currently 180 dispensaries operating within the city. If the ordinance takes effect, there will be a possible 97 parcels available to dispensaries within the five legal zones. That number, however, is highly misleading, said Eugene Davidovich, a spokesman for San Diego Americans for Safe Access. Davidovich said because of the difficulty in finding sympathetic landlords — in addition to the new restrictions — there will likely be only a handful of dispensaries allowed to legally operate. Planning Commission Chairman Eric Naslund, who cast one of the dissenting votes, agreed. “I want to make absolutely certain that it isn’t so overly restrictive that it becomes an outright ban, and I think that that’s where the present ordinance is heading,” he said. Commissioner Tim Golba echoed Naslund’s thoughts, though he eventually voted in favor of the recommendation. “Even at 97 parcels, that’s pretty restrictive if you assume half of those are either not available or landlords wouldn’t even consider renting to it,” Golba said. “Now we’re down to 50 sites in the whole city that would be applicable. That’s probably overly restrictive in anybody’s eyes.” One thing most advocates of medicinal marijuana agree on is that if 180 dispensaries are condensed down to a handful, the majority of sales will return to where they were prior to the 1996 decision that made medicinal marijuana legal: the street. “I have patients who are very ill, who already take the bus and they’re not going to be able to go halfway across the county,” said Wilcox. “They’ll just have to get it on the street.” Opponents of cooperatives voiced concern at the Planning Commission meeting that cooperatives have changed the “fabric of the city” and that cooperatives “operate in flagrant disregard for the law.” Dr. Igor Grant, a professor, physician and director of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at UCSD, said regulation is of utmost importance, but it’s equally important that the public accepts marijuana for its properties beyond what has been illustrated in “Reefer Madness.” “We need to come to a place where marijuana is treated like a medicine but also regulated like a medicine,” he said. “There are many medications that have harmful side effects and may be habit-forming, like sleeping pills, but we use them and regulate them and take advantage of their benefits. Yes, marijuana has some harmful properties, but it also has beneficial properties, and patients who are not benefiting from other treatments can benefit from this one.”