Clock Ticking in LA
Wednesday, May 5th, 2010
Mayor Villaraigosa
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa signed the final version of the city’s new medical cannabis ordinance on April 30. The state’s toughest regulations become effective on June 7. The City Attorney’s office sent letters to hundreds of collectives deemed in violation of the ordinance this week. The letters threaten civil and criminal penalties if the collectives remain open after the effective date. Time will tell if the city has the resources and political will to send in the police department to enforce its threats.
Collectives qualified to register under the ordinance are breathing only a little easier. Restrictions on where collectives can be located and on how many be in any one of the city’s thirty five Community Plan Areas mean that virtually all of the qualified collectives must relocate in short order. In response to a lawsuit filed by Americans for Safe Access (ASA), the city dropped a requirement that collectives provide their new address within seven days of the effective date. This is only a minor reprieve, however. All of the qualified collectives must complete a thorough (and expensive) pre-inspection process at their new address within thirty days after the city publishes the “priority list” of qualified candidates.
A handful of collectives will find suitable properties and jump through bureaucratic hoops in time to register under the ordinance, but it is unlikely that it will be the maximum number of seventy allowed. This is good news for compliance-minded collectives that are not qualified to register in the first round. Those that can wait six months to enter lotteries may still find an opening in one of the Community Plan Areas.
The Byzantine timelines and other restrictions in this ordinance have already generated litigation. Expect that to continue as qualified and un-qualified collectives run up against deadlines, unworkable restrictions, and regulations that violate their rights and common sense.
