The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors Tuesday evening tabled action on a resolution that would have lowered the county's allowable amount of marijuana for medical marijuana patients and caregivers.

Medical marijuana patients or their caregivers are currently allowed 30 plants and three pounds of processed marijuana per year. The action before the board was to repeal that resolution and pass another one that allows only eight ounces of processed pot and six mature or 12 immature plants.

After dozens of the medical marijuana patients spoke for nearly two hours against repealing the resolution, Board Chair Shirlee Zane closed the public hearing before everyone had a chance to speak because Supervisor Valerie Brown, who was attending her last meeting, had to leave early.

That prompted an outcry from those who had not yet spoken. Brown then made a motion to table the issue and it passed unanimously.

Speakers said the lower allowable amounts are insufficient medicine, and the board was in effect re-criminalizing medical marijuana.

Attorney Chris Andrian told the board repealing the current resolution "would create chaos in the court system."

"Every case will require litigation," Andrian said regarding arrests for violations of the lowered amounts.

Other critics said there was no input from caregivers, marijuana dispensaries and other stakeholders, including the public, before the ad hoc committee made its recommendation to lower the marijuana amounts and bring it before the Board of Supervisors at its last meeting of the year.

Zane and Brown were on an ad hoc committee that recommended the lower threshold. The committee said illegal use of marijuana is increasing in the county, especially among youths, and growing operations in unoccupied homes and on rural land is creating environmental and health and safety problems.

Sonoma County Sheriff Steve Freitas told the supervisors his investigators report growers from outside the county and Bay Area perceive Sonoma County as being permissive toward growing medical marijuana.

Board members said they are not targeting medical marijuana users but the lucrative criminal trade that has developed in the county and is costing the sheriff's office $2 million a year investigating marijuana-related complaints.

Opponents said lowering the allowable amount to the state's default possession and cultivation limits for medicinal pot is not the solution to the illegal grows.

The board also voted unanimously to consider drafting an ordinance with county planners that would prohibit the cultivation of marijuana in increasingly prevalent rented and unoccupied residential buildings, known as "grow houses."

Angie Monette, spokeswoman for Citizens for Responsible Access, told the board her group is prepared to gather 15,000 signatures to put the lower marijuana amounts before voters if the board approved them this evening.

After the meeting she said the board's vote to table the issue was "the most perfect decision we could have wished for with five-days notice.

"Our only hope is they will engage all stakeholders in an appropriate forum," she said. "This was democracy in action."