Sacramento officials Thursday night presented a plan to cap the number of marijuana dispensaries in the city at a dozen and impose strict requirements for their operations.

Faced with a packed room of pot shop owners and medical marijuana advocates, City Manager Gus Vina asked for measured input on "an emotional issue."

But representatives for marijuana patients and many of the city's 39 registered dispensaries threatened lawsuits. They charged the plan would shutter tax-producing businesses and deny care to hundreds of cannabis patients.

"This proposal would kill myself and other patients in similar situations," complained Ryan Landers, a Sacramento senior adviser for the Compassionate Coalition, a medical marijuana advocacy group. "You're going to close clubs where hundreds of patients get marijuana. This is a huge problem for the sick."

Landers, whose neck was bandaged on both sides from pain shots he takes for shingles, told city officials he was one of the architects of the 1996 Proposition 215 medical marijuana law.

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