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.

Ed Reyes

The Los Angeles City Council will not be voting this week on a medical cannabis ordinance approved by the Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee. The LA Times reports that City Councilmember Ed Reyes wants more time to resolve the complicated issues surrounding the ordinance, and staff at City Hall tell me that more committee hearings may proceed a vote by the full City Council. It is possible that a joint committee meeting between the PLUM and Public Safety Committees will address the necessary changes.

At this point, delay may be beneficial for patients. The City Attorney’s latest draft version has some big flaws – including lack of protection for patient privacy, a ban on edible preparations, and unreasonable restrictions on where collectives can be located. Americans for Safe Access (ASA) recommends substantial changes to the draft. It will be easier to make improvements like these at the committee level than it will be before fourteen or fifteen City Councilmembers.

City Councilmembers are right not to be bullied into adopting a bad ordinance. This issue is too complicated and important to rush.

City Attorney Carmen Trutanich

Los Angeles City Councilmember Dennis Zine told a standing room only crowd at Tuesday’s Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee hearing that an ordinance that does not recognize sales of medical cannabis would not work for Los Angeles, but he is worried about creating a policy that violates state law. The Councilmember’s ambivalence is part of the confusion that dominated yesterday’s marathon committee meeting. The PLUM committee voted to continue the debate on the regulations, Zine’s motion for more study into relevant case law, and a progress report from the planning department for another week to allow committee members more time to review the material.

Part of what the committee is reviewing is a new draft ordinance from City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, which his office provided to the PLUM committee and the public less than one hour before the meeting was scheduled to begin. Like two previous versions prepared by his predecessor, Rocky Delgadillo, the new version does not recognize legitimate sales of cannabis within the membership of a legally organized and operated medical cannabis collective. Instead, the ordinance seeks to regulate collective patient gardens – a regulatory strategy  rejected by the committee earlier this year.

The City Attorney arranged for a parade of officials to reinforce his position that sales of cannabis are illegal in all circumstances. Representatives from the Long Beach District Attorney and City Attorney’s offices inexplicably joined the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and Los Angeles Police Department to reinforce Trutanich’s message. Medical cannabis advocates can take a lesson from the discipline with which the City Attorney’s team kept to his talking points. In comments without time limits, every official speaker insisted that “over the counter sales” are illegal.

Dozens of advocates responded to a call by Americans for Safe Access (ASA) to speak to the committee about the new regulations. Strictly limited to one minute each, patients and advocates asked the PLUM Committee to protect the privacy of patient cultivators and make a myriad of other improvements to what advocates call “the Reyes version,” an alternative ordinance prepared by city staff in advance of today’s meeting at the request of PLUM Committee Chairman Ed Reyes. Speakers also took issue with the City Attorney’s intransigence on sales of medicine and timing in releasing his version of the ordinance.

In written comments to PLUM Committee members in advance of the meeting, I explained that state law allows for sales of cannabis inside a member-supplied collective association, and that state courts have consistently upheld these associations and transactions as legal.  This is a message ASA and allies have repeated in a private meeting with senior staff at Trutanich’s office and in a White Paper published last month.

Delay at the PLUM Committee is another impediment progress on permanent regulations for the city. That is unfortunate, because sensible regulations are exactly what the city needs to quell community concern over the unchecked proliferation of storefront collectives and recent violence associated with medical cannabis. It’s also too bad for patients. The longer these issues go unresolved, the more likely the City Council is to react to public pressure with onerous regulations.

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.

LA City Attorney Carmen "Nuch" Trutanich

City staff reported some progress during the brief discussion. Staff has mapped “sensitive uses” for 35% of the city. When the entire city is mapped, Planning Department staff will draw radii of various sizes around these addresses to determine how far collectives and cooperatives must be from a laundry list of uses, which may include schools, churches, parks, beach access points, youth-oriented businesses, places where young people tend to congregate, public beach access points, drug treatment facilities, and on and on.

Debate about what constitutes a sensitive use and how far permitted collectives must be from each is likely to be one of the most contentious debates in the process of writing the new ordinance. Neighbors concerned about crime and unchecked expansion in the number of patients’ associations are calling for broad buffer zones from a wide range of uses. Councilmember Paul Koretz, who is temporarily serving on the committee in former Councilmember Jack Weiss’ seat, expressed concern that the buffer zones must not be so large as to make operating a collective impossible. Chairman Ed Reyes assured listeners that the goal was to have an enforceable ordinance that secured access for those in need.

Buffer zones will be one of the contentious issues in the new draft ordinance, but there is an even more serious issue that threatens to complicate the process late in the game. City Attorney Trutanich has yet to weigh in on an unpublished draft ordinance circulated by city staff last week. Advocates worry that the City Attorney may be influenced by staff held over from former City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, who regarded all storefront collectives and sales of cannabis as illegal. If Trurtanich ignores City Council instructions and case law affirming the legal status of collectives, he may revert to Delgadillo’s position that “illegal” activity can not be regulated. This would be a serious set back for patients and advocates.

Representatives from Americans for Safe Access (ASA) and the Greater Los Angeles Collectives Alliance (GLACA) are working hard to educate the City Attorney and his staff about the California Attorney General’s guidelines for medical cannabis, which recognize that legally organized and operated collectives may maintain storefront facilities; and about important case law upholding the legal status of patients’ associations in Los Angeles. Recent ASA court victories in Butte County and San Diego are the cornerstone of this effort.

Trutanich may pleasantly surprise advocates, who rallied around his candidacy in hopes of defeating former City Councilmember and medical cannabis opponent Jack Weiss in this year’s runoff election. However, his silence does little to reassure the community at this strategic juncture. Unless Trutanich repudiates his predecessor’s ideological stance and vocally supports real implementation, advocates may soon conclude that “better than Jack Weiss” is too low a standard for the City Attorney.

No one will benefit if the debate about new regulations regresses to where it was a year ago, when law enforcement and a reluctant City Attorney impeded regulation based on personal bias and faulty legal analysis. It is past time to move forward with sensible regulations, which are proven to protect patients and the community by reducing crime and complaints around collectives. The City Council should be eager for Los Angeles to join dozens of other jurisdictions that have already realized these benefits – especially given a growing backlash from neighborhood groups and critical media.