Pushing for a bad policy
October 21st, 2009 | by Don Duncan |Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich is pushing the City Council to quickly adopt the latest version of his ordinance regulating medical cannabis collectives in the city – maybe as soon as next week. The belated urgency stems from a judge’s decision to issue a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) blocking enforcement of the city’s expired moratorium against a collective that opened after the effective date of the measure. City staff and Councilmembers want to move quickly to prevent a renewed proliferation of collectives, which would almost certainly provoke more bad media and a renewed public outcry.
City Council staff expect the new draft ordinance from the City Attorney to be approved by the Public Safety Committee as soon as Monday, October 26, and the measure could be before the full City Council that same week. Entrenched staff left over from former City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo’s term continue to insist that sales of cannabis and storefronts maintained by legally organized and operated collectives are illegal. As with previous versions, provisions of the draft ordinance are unacceptable to patients and advocates. Specifically, the draft ordinance lacks appropriate protection for patient privacy, prohibits edible and concentrated cannabis, and imposes unreasonable buffer zones for collectives around a laundry list of sensitive land uses.
Patients and advocates should be ready to spend some time at City Hall next week pushing back on this hurry-up measure in the Public Safety Committee and before the full City Council. I recommend joining the Los Angeles Americans for Safe Access (ASA) email announcement list for breaking news.
Tags: carmen trutanich, Los Angeles, medical cannabis, Public safety committee, regulations, TRO
