Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
The Los Angeles City Attorney’s office misrepresented the position of California Attorney General Jerry Brown today, implying that the state’s top law enforcement official said that all sales of cannabis are illegal. That never happened. On Saturday, KFI Radio in Los Angeles broadcast a previously recorded statement by the Attorney General Brown in which he says, “Unfortunately, in some communities, Los Angeles in particular, there’s a lot of exploitation and just getting into the drug business, the dope business.”
Pundits at the notoriously conservative radio station (home to Rush Limbaugh and anti-gay crusader “Dr. Laura” Schlesinger) then added their own spin to the Attorney General’s comments. The reporters opined “California’s Attorney General says he supports efforts by LA prosecutors to go after marijuana dispensaries selling pot to patients. Jerry Brown says marijuana’s illegal to sell, no matter what, but he says the state’s medical marijuana laws are very confusing about who is allowed to provide the drug to patients.”
Really? No recorded evidence supports that expansive interpretation of the Attorney General’s comments. In fact, a spokesman told Americans for Safe Access today that the report was inaccurate and Brown has not changed his position. That didn’t stop the Jane Usher from the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office from picking up where the ideologues at KFI left off, and taking it even further. She read the commentator’s expansive interpretation and the Attorney Generals comments back-to-back, never indicating to Councilmembers that she was mixing the two and muddying the waters.
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Friday, September 18th, 2009
Medical cannabis collectives in Los Angeles may have to tell the police department who grows their medicine if the City Council adopts a draft ordinance that will be heard before the Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee on Tuesday. The city’s Chief Legislative Analyst and city staff prepared the latest draft of the ordinance after the PLUM Committee rejected a version prepared by former City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo that would have banned storefront collectives earlier this year.
The ordinance requires that “The names of all registered members of the Cooperative/Collective who will be contributing Medical Marijuana to the Cooperative/Collective must be disclosed in writing and in advance to the Los Angeles Police Department.” That provision would give patient-cultivators pause in the most tolerant jurisdictions, but it is a poison pill in a city where local law enforcement considers all medical cannabis activity suspect and routinely cooperates with the Drug Enforcement Administration to close collectives under federal law.
In three pages (updated 9/18/09) of suggested improvements to be delivered tomorrow, I caution PLUM Committee members that, “Requiring the patients’ association to disclose the names and addresses of members who supply medicine is unnecessary and places the patient-cultivator at undue legal risk from inappropriate law enforcement activity, rogue police officers, and federal interference. This provision is unacceptable and should be deleted in its entirety.”
Tuesday’s committee meeting will also be the first chance for Angelenos to hear what newly-elected City Attorney Carmen Trutanich has to say about the propose regulations. I was discouraged to hear his Senior Adviser, Jane Usher, tell a neighborhood group in August that her boss could not find any rationale for sales of cannabis under state law – even within the membership a legally organized and operated patients’ association. That may be a bad sign that Trutanich intends to follow in his predecessor’s anti-collective footsteps. That would make it harder to persuade the PLUM Committee and full City Council to adopt regulations that respect the legal status of patients’ associations that maintain storefronts and provide medicine in exchange for financial remuneration in accordance with state law.
The PLUM Committee meets at 2:00 PM on Tuesday, September 22, in Room 350 at City Hall. Come early to complete a speaker’s card if you want to talk to committee members about the draft ordinance.
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