The City Council rejected plans to include residential uses as sensitive uses, and opted instead to prevent patients collectives from being located “on a lot abutting, across the street or alley from, or having a common corner with” any residential use, including mixed use properties. If approved with the final draft of the ordiance next week, this provision may displace hundreds of collectives, many of whom have never been problematic in their neighborhoods.

In written comments to the City Council, I said:

“Well-regulated medical cannabis collectives are good and inconspicuous neighbors, and there is no need that these facilities be separated from sensitive or residential uses. Los Angeles Chief of Police Charlie Beck told the Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee last year that an increase in crime was not typically associated with these facilities. Security requirements, hours of operation, and other measures in the draft ordinance are sufficient to protect public safety. If buffer zones are needed, however, they should be at least more lenient than the location regulations required of the city’s adult-oriented businesses, which according to Los Angeles Municipal Code 12.70(c), must be located more than 500 feet from schools, churches, and parks.

Requiring collectives to be located at least one thousand feet from residential uses is not just unnecessary – it is unworkable. Residential and commercial uses exist in close proximity in most of our neighborhoods. A one-thousand foot buffer zone from residential uses will eliminate virtually all suitable properties, as seen on maps prepared by the Planning Department. References to a “vacant residential lot” and “lot improved with a residential building or mixed use building containing residential units” should be removed from Section 45.19.6.3(A)(2). A more reasonable approach would be to allow collectives in any commercial or industrial zone, without regard to residential uses.”

The City Council may vote to adopt the final ordiannce as soon as Tuesday, January19.

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.

This is just the latest dirty pool from entrenched staff at the City Attorney’s office, who seem bent on steering the Los Angeles City Council down their own narrow ideological path. They have consistently confused Primary Caregivers with patients’ collectives and ignored important case law like People v Urziceanu. The City Attorney’s staff has been wrong about regulations, wrong about case law, wrong about the infamous hardship provision, and wrong about extending the moratorium. It is not surprising they are wrong about Jerry Brown, too.

Perhaps City Councilmembers would do well to look to what the Attorney General said in his guidelines for medical cannabis published last year. Attorney General Brown wrote that “a properly organized and operated collective of cooperative that dispenses medical marijuana through a storefront may be lawful under California law,” provided the facility substantially complies with the guidelines.

Harsh criticism today by Councilmembers Reyes and Koretz indicate that the City Council is growing weary of bad legal advice. After lengthy debate, Councilmembers rejected the City Attorney’s ban on sales of cannabis for a second time – opting instead for alternative language proposed by Council President Garcetti.

You can read more about today’s City Council meeting in the LA Times.

“The process that started with a motion by Los Angeles City Councilmember Dennis Zine in 2005 may reach a milestone on Tuesday, when the City Council is scheduled to vote on a draft ordinance regulating hundreds of medical cannabis collectives in the city. That vote will do little to quell controversy in the city. Advocates and neighborhood groups are both unsatisfied with the proposal. The advocate community is buzzing about lawsuits, voter initiatives, and recall campaigns. The media wants to know whom to blame, and everyone is pointing fingers.

In this milieu, Councilmembers have a lot to do if they plan to adopt the ordinance before the Thanksgiving break. At joint committee and City Council meetings last week, the Councilmembers proposed more than forty sometimes contradictory amendments to the ordinance; and in a rebuke to City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, sent instructions to staff to research other regulatory models and alternative legal interpretations. (You can download the various amendments from the Council File Management System by searching for documents related to Council File. No. 08-0923.)…”

Read the entire post with links on the ASA Blog.

Speak Up Today for Sensible Regulations in LA!

The Los Angeles City Council will vote on an ordinance regulating medical cannabis collectives next week, and we need you to help us make it workable. There are some provisions in the draft ordinance that are simply unacceptable. If these are adopted and enforced, many of the city’s collectives will be forced to close.

Can you take a moment today to call your representative on the Los Angeles City Council and ask him or her to make the changes listed below? It does make a difference! City Councilmembers have already responded to community input by making big improvements in the draft ordinance.

You can find your City Council representative by typing your address in the “My Neighborhood” box on the city’s web site or by calling (213) 978-1020.

Don’t live in Los Angeles? No problem! May we recommend you contact City Council President Eric Garcetti at (213)-473-7013?

Tell you representative: “I  support sensible regulations for medical cannabis in Los Angeles. I want you to adopt the changes recommended by advocates on Friday, November 20. Specifically, I want you to…”

(pick two or three points here that are most important to you)

•    Protect patients’ rights by keeping records confidential
•    Adopt buffer zones of 500 feet or less between collectives and sensitive uses
•    Let collectives share an ally with residential uses
•    Reject a narrow definition of a collective that requires on-site cultivation
•    Allow a sufficient number of collectives to serve the growing number of patients in the city – at least two hundred

Make these calls now so that City Councilmembers know what patients need before Tuesday’s vote.

You can get more information in person at the LA-ASA meeting on Saturday!

Read about important work ASA Chief Counsel Joe Elford has done to help improve the draft ordinance, including proposed litigation over the City Attorney’s ban on sales of medicine.

Patients and advocates worry that newly-elected City Attorney Carmen Trutanich has yet to make any public comment repudiating his processor’s anti-medical cannabis position. In fact, Trutanich’s Senior Advisor Jane Usher told the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Committee on August 1 that staff in her office could find no legal protection for sales of cannabis, even inside the membership of a legally organized and operated patients’ association.

On August 10, ASA Chief Counsel Joe Elford and I joined representatives of the Greater Los Angeles Collective Alliance (GLACA) in an unprecedented meeting with Ms. Usher and two of the other top eight managers in Trutanich’s office to discuss regulatory solutions for the city. We presented the staff with a new White Paper published by ASA and GLACA and a draft ordinance based on input from the city’s defunct medical cannabis working group. The White Paper explains the justification for storefront collectives and sales of medicine within their membership. It also makes policy recommendations for the city’s final ordinance. Trutanich’s staff listened attentively and asked hard questions – both good signs, but the outcome is uncertain.

It is possible that Carmen Trutanich will disappoint the medical cannabis community, which rallied around his campaign earlier this year, when he returns recommendations to the PLUM Committee this month. If so, patients and advocates will have to work hard persuade committee members to reject his advice and stay the course on developing sensible regulations for Los Angeles. This is important not just because regulations are proven to reduce crime and complaints in communities, but also because they will finally set some standards in a city that has grappled for too long with how best to regulate access to medicine.