Thursday, August 26th, 2010
City Attorney Carmen Trutanich
From the ASA Blog –
“The Los Angeles City Attorney’s office has filed a complaint asking for a Temporary Restraining Order and Permanent Injunction closing 135 pre-moratorium medical cannabis collectives deemed ineligible to register under the city’s new ordinance. The complaint is City Attorney Carmen Trutanich’s latest escalation in his campaign to roll back safe access to medical cannabis in the city. His aggressive posture has already raised the ire of patients, legal collective operators, and advocates in the state’s largest city – including many who played an instrumental role in developing and promoting regulation in the city…”
Read the entire post and download a copy of the complaints at http://safeaccessnow.org/blog/?p=845
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Friday, August 20th, 2010
The Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (LABDS) published a bulletin to help the medical cannabis collective operators understand the implementation of the city’s complicated new ordinance. The 32-page document outlines the Byzantine registration process and includes the time-sensitive paperwork needed to comply. Applicants should be careful to understand the process. Any violation or missed deadline will disqualify a collective from registration – leaving them no option but to join a series of lotteries to select candidates at random for vacancies in any of the city’s thirty five Community Plan Areas.
(more…)
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Thursday, August 19th, 2010
ASA Chief Counsel Joe Elford
From Americans for Safe Access:
“Santa Ana, CA — California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal issued a long-awaited ruling today, choosing not to decide whether localities can ban medical marijuana distribution, and remanding the case back to Orange County Superior Court for further factual development. While nearly four-dozen California localities — including some of the most populous cities, such as Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, and San Francisco — have successfully implemented ordinances regulating medical marijuana dispensaries, more than 130 cities have imposed bans like Anaheim’s…”
Read the entire press release online.
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Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
A California appellate court has delayed publishing a decision on whether or not cities can ban medical cannabis collectives until August 18. In statement published yesterday, the Fourth District Court of Appeals said only that, “The issues raised require additional time to study the circulating opinion.” This terse statement gives little indication of how the court will rule in Qualified Patients Association v. City of Anaheim.
Lawmakers and judges all over the state are looking to this case as a cue on how to proceed with regulations and litigation. If the appellate court upholds the District Courts decision to allow an outright ban, jurisdictions statewide may feel emboldened to ban collectives and cooperatives. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors already asked staff to keep an eye on this case in conmection with a motion by Supervisor Michael Antonovich to ban collectives in unincorporated areas of the county. A decision in the city’s favor may also make it more difficult for medical cannabis advocates to argue that highly restrictive ordinances, like the ones recently adopted in Long Beach and Los Angeles, are illegal de facto bans. This could be a factor in numerous lawsuits filed against the City of Los Angeles.
Qualified Patients Association filed a lawsuit challenging the city’s ban on medical cannabis collectives in 2007. Americans for Safe Access (ASA) filed an amicus brief in the case, and ASA Chief Counsel Joe Elford argued on behalf of the collective before the appellate court last September. “The City of Anaheim cannot hide behind federal law,” said Joe Elford. “Local governments cannot simply ban an activity that has been deemed lawful by the state.”
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Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
Jeffery Lake
John R. Lamb writing in San Diego Citybeat -
“’It is coming, and it’s going to come hard!’ Jeffrey Lake is preaching to the choir this day, but the lanky, buttoned-down Downtown attorney sounds uncertain that his message is getting through. San Diego city leaders intend to pick off medical-cannabis collectives one by one, he intones, and without a unified effort to fight back, the battle will be even more uphill…”
Read the entire story online.
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