“’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…”
An employee at a medical cannabis collective in Northridge was shot in the face and critically wounded on Saturday – the third violent armed robbery in Los Angeles in less than one week. It is unlikely that the robberies are related, but the sudden outburst of violence has turned up the heat in the debate about medical cannabis state wide. Some elected officials are already using these tragedies as a rationale for rolling back safe access at the state and local level.
ASA Government Affairs Director Caren Woodson debates Ron Brooks, President of the National Narcotics Officers’ Associations’ Coalition, about medical cannabis regulation in a webcast hosted by the National League of Cities. Local governments all over the country are grappling with how to regulate medical cannabis, and tactics proposed by our opponents are increasingly sophisticated. ASA is working to help frame the debate about medical cannabis and local regulations to establish protect safe access for patients nationwide.
Read more about the webcast and ASA’s work on the ASA website.
I call on medical cannabis patients and providers to join me in supporting ASA, the nation’s largest organization of patients, medical professionals, scientists and concerned citizens promoting safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research. ASA’s work helped make a place for safe access – and we need this ongoing work right now to hold the ground we have and push forward against a growing backlash. Please join ASA today!
“Americans for Safe Access (ASA) filed an appeal of the Zoning Administrator’s interpretation of the new medical cannabis ordinance in Los Angeles on Friday. The appeal challenges the Zoning Administrator’s position on parking and nonconforming use status for medical cannabis collectives…”
Los Angeles Zoning Administrator Michael Logrande has published his interpretation of what the city’s zoning rules mean for medical cannabis collectives in the city. His interpretation acknowledges that collectives can locate in any zone in the city, provided that they meet the requirements of the new ordinance. Collective operators struggling to find compliant locations may be surprised, however, to see a new hurdle in the interpretation. Mr. Logrande states that collectives “operate in a way that is similar to medical offices and clinics,” and should therefore have one parking space per two hundred square feet of floor space. This may make finding a location even harder than it is already.
ASA Government Affairs Director Caren Woodson debates Ron Brooks, President of the National Narcotics Officers’ Associations’ Coalition, about medical cannabis regulation in a 