About Medical Marijuana

In a hury all the sudden

Two eleventh hour developments promise to make next week one of the most important in the long march towards regulations for medical cannabis collective in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles City Attorney’s office published a fifth revised draft ordinance just before 4:00 PM this afternoon, leaving only a few hours for City Council staff to digest the draft and make recommendations to Councilmembers before an 8:30 AM joint committee meeting Monday morning. The draft is little improved from previous versions. It still lacks protection for patient privacy, forbids sales of medicine, and includes unreasonable location restrictions.

The second surprise? Monday’s joint committee meeting with members of the Public Safety and Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committees comes only two days before the badly flawed ordinance goes before the full City Council for a vote on Wednesday, November 18. That means stakeholders have no real chance to respond to the joint committee’s decision or to express their opinions to other City Councilmembers. Obviously, Councilmembers are under pressure form the City Attorney, media, and neighborhood groups to move quickly.

Patients and advocates will ask City Council President Eric Garcetti to delay Wednesday’s City Council vote. If he listens, they will have more time to critique the latest draft and talk with their elected representatives about more objective input from city staff. Every City Councilmember should consider, for example, a report from the Planning Department indicating that the City Attorney’s location requirements will force more than 75% of the city’s collectives to close (assuming any can navigate the other onerous restrictions).

Angelenos must insist that City Councilmembers reject the bad policy and the sneaky process. We don’t need any more eleventh hour surprises in a process that has been creeping along since 2005. Medical cannabis patients and advocates should speak up loudly in phone calls and emails to elected representatives – and show up in force at City Hall on Monday and Wednesday morning.

Tags: Eric garcetti, Los Angeles, medical cannabis, PLUM committee, Public safety committee, regulations