NEWS: Los Angeles tries to rein in wild market for medical marijuana

By PETER HECHT; Sacramento Bee

LOS ANGELES - The medicinal marijuana flow is coming to an end in the palm-shaded "vapor room" of the Pure Life Alternative Wellness Center.

Los Angeles' restrictive new ordinance to stem the spread of medical marijuana dispensaries in the city will ban on-site pot consumption. It may force the closure of as many as 800 outlets.

Over the past three years, this sprawling metropolis has fostered the wildest of markets for legal sales of marijuana for medical use. City leaders are trying now to rein it in.

Last month, the City Council passed an ordinance that caps the number of marijuana dispensaries at 70 while exempting another 100 pot clubs that were in business as of 2007. Dispensary owners have responded with threats of lawsuits and a possible November ballot fight to overturn the rules.

Los Angeles' battle to govern its medical marijuana industry offers cautionary lessons for other California cities grappling, in widely conflicting ways, with burgeoning pot sales and piqued legal arguments over the hazy rules of the trade.

Even some medical marijuana advocates say Los Angeles lost control of its neighborhoods when dispensaries started flowering in the city in 2006. A feeble moratorium, passed in 2007 to stop new pot clubs from coming in, failed to slow the spread.

The moratorium eventually was thrown out in court, and the estimated number of dispensaries reached 1,000.

"This was the biggest city in the world" to allow dispensaries "and the path of least resistance," said Don Duncan, state director of Americans for Safe Access, a group that promotes medical pot use. "It was the easiest place to come to do this."

Source: NewsChief.com

NEWS: Medical Marijuana Faces Obstacles In LA

Despite sharp criticism and the threat of litigation on Tuesday, the LA City Council formally approved an ordinance that will close an estimated 800 medical marijuana collectives in the city.

Between 70 and 186 dispensaries would be allowed to remain open under new restrictions, though more than 75% of those would have to relocate. Opponents of the ordinance say these restrictions infringe on the right to the safe access afforded medical marijuana patients under the Compassionate Use Act of 1996

"Clearly you all don't understand," attorney Jennifer Sores told the City Council, "This is medicine. So treat it like medicine."

The new restrictions require dispensaries to locate far from churches, public schools, rehab centers and other "sensitive use" areas. Other stipulations in the ordinance include that dispensaries keep security footage on file for long periods, confine patients to membership at a single collective, require specific ID cards and offer patients' contact information to law enforcement without a subpoena.

Graham Berry, an attorney representing several of the dispensaries that may be forced to close, suggested that these restrictions imply that marijuana is being regulated as a dangerous or criminal substance rather than something with genuine medical uses.

"The needs of this particular medical group and patients should not be treated like gambling, sex, and liquor stores," said Berry. "Please stop playing politics with patients' rights and health."

While the ordinance ostensibly clarifies the use of marijuana as a medical substance under California state law, its provisions take more from the federal stance on marijuana as a criminal substance. There appears to be real confusion as to whether the city is regulating marijuana as medicine or a controlled substance and some ambiguity in the ordinance as to whether its users (as recommended by MDs) ought to be considered real patients or potential criminals.

One of the major problems with the ordinance, according to City Councilman Bill Rosenthal and others, is that it may not even help to reduce marijuana's role in criminal activity.

"Somewhere in the '80s," Rosendahl said, "the federal government turned [marijuana] into this thing worse than any other drug out there and then they began filling the jails. We saw gangs go from community neighborhood interactions into a serious territory marijuana distribution operation, and so funds would come in and they would enhance one's gang membership. What do they do? They fight with each other over territory in the selling of drugs."

Other LA residents agreed with Rosenthal's sentiment.

"If you want to keep crime off the streets," said Los Angeles resident Karen Elizabeth during public comment. "Keep the dispensaries open."

Mark Herd, a member of the Westwood neighborhood council, also urged the council to consider medical marijuana in the same way as other medicines, and protested that the ordinance's location restrictions would leave no dispensaries in Brentwood, the Pacific Palisades, Westwood and many other areas of the City.

"Bill Rosendahl," Herd said, "understands that we need more than one Walgreen's in Venice."

Source: The Huffington Post

VIDEO: Richard Eastman speaks on personal medical marijuana experience at LA City Council Meeting (November 11, 2009)

VIDEO: Medical Marijuana Opponent - John Walsh at LA City Council Meeting from 11-18-2009

IN THE NEWS: Does marijuana make sweet taste sweeter?

No, we're not endorsing use of the weed, just noting an interesting piece of science published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by scientists at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia and Kyushu University in Japan.

The active ingredients in cannabis "act directly on taste receptors on the tongue to enhance sweet taste," according to a release from Monell -- at least that's what happens in mice. One of the authors, Dr. Robert Margolskee of Monell, noted that this phenom may be related to the famed "munchies" marijuana users report. (I'd send you to the research paper but it's not accessible online.)

Talking of marijuana and food, this from an Associated Press article: "Gourmet chefs are taking the art of cooking with marijuana to a higher level. In Denver, a new medical-marijuana shop called Ganja Gourmet serves cannabis-infused specialties such as pizza, hummus and lasagna. Across town in the Mile-High City, a Caribbean restaurant plans to offer classes on how to make multi-course meals with pot in every dish." You have to present a medical card to get served those items at Ganja Gourmet, apparently.

On L.A.'s ongoing medical marijuana dispensary debate, meanwhile, the LA Times' Tim Rutten had this to say on the topic in a Wednesday column:

"There are about 120 Starbucks coffee outlets within the Los Angeles city limits. According to the most reliable estimates, there are somewhere between 900 and 1,000 medical marijuana dispensaries. Mull over the implications of that comparison and you're on the way to understanding why the City Council seems enmeshed in an endless wrangle over how to regulate the number and sites of the nonprofit cooperatives allowed by local ordinance to distribute cannabis to individuals with doctors' prescriptions." His take, in part: The medical necessity is "really rather limited," and "we'd be best regulating the facilities like bars and liquor stores." (But read the whole column here.)

The City Council still hasn't decided how close the dispensaries can be to schools and residential areas and will be taking the matter up again on Jan. 13.

--Rosie Mestel

Source: Los Angeles Times

NEW VIDEO: 12/16/2009 LA City Council Meeting on medical marijuana ordinance. Public comment by Patrick Weisman.

NEW VIDEO: Councilman Eric Garcetti discusses medical marijuana ordinance December 16, 2009 at LA City Council Meeting

NEW VIDEO: LA Council President Eric Garcetti on Medical Marijuana Ordinance (Dec. 9, 2009)

IN THE NEWS: Trouble Ahead for Medical Marijuana in California

California and Los Angeles have been pioneer sites for the expansion of the legal right to use marijuana. But local officials may now be at the forefront of curtailing some of that exuberance. If the Los Angeles city council has its way, the plethora of largely unregulated medical-marijuana facilities that have become a neighborhood blight in parts of the city may finally be brought under control. L.A. officials and medical-marijuana advocates estimate there may be as many as 1,000 such dispensaries. But in a preliminary vote on Tuesday, Dec. 8, the council indicated its intention to cap the number at just 70.

 Read full story »

Source: Los Angeles Times

NEW VIDEO: LA City Council Meeting, Medical Marijuana Ordinance - Patrick Duff Comments

NEW VIDEO: Dec 9, 2009 Los Angeles City Council Meeting, Medical Marijuana Ordinance - Mr Kerns

LA City Council set to consider new rules for pot shops

The Los Angeles City Council Tuesday is expected to vote on a new ordinance regulating medical marijuana dispensaries.

Medical marijuana activists are closely following the LA City Council’s deliberations. (related videos)

“I am encouraged to see what direction the City Councils going right now," said Don Duncan, California Director of Americans for Safe Access.

Read full story »

Source: Los Angeles Times

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