Pubdate: Mon, 5 Oct 2009
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Page: A16, Lead Editorial
Copyright: 2009 Los Angeles Times
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/bc7El3Yo
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Cited: Los Angeles City Council 
http://lacity.org/lacity/YourGovernment/CityCouncil/index.htm
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/dispensaries

GONE TO POT

The City Council's Lackadaisical Approach to Medical Marijuana Has 
Resulted in Clinics Sprouting Like, Well, Weeds.

This is Los Angeles, where laws that seem sensible on the first quick 
reading turn out to be studded with exceptions or are enforced 
sporadically. Consider billboards. The city's porous legal barriers 
encourage rogue sign companies to ignore the law and then to sue when 
they are challenged. They often win - because the laws were so 
clumsily drafted or applied as to be deemed void by the courts.

As it is with billboards, so it threatens to become with medical 
(ahem) marijuana and the city's attempt at a regulatory scheme to 
accommodate Proposition 215, the "compassionate use" act that voters 
adopted in 1996. The City Council called a moratorium on new clinics 
and denied every request for "hardship" exemptions - yet it failed to 
block many of those rejected applicants from opening anyway. Hundreds 
of storefronts now sell the drug, adding to the impression that, in 
Los Angeles, the initiative is a cover for virtual legalization. 
Present your physician-approved card and you can buy the stuff to 
treat a bad day at the office.

Let's be clear: Virtual legalization is not and should not be the 
city's goal. There is a nationwide debate to be had over fully 
legalizing marijuana, but neither Proposition 215 nor city regulation 
of clinics is the proper vehicle for that discussion. The council 
should be - and finally seems to be - working to allow legitimate 
medical patients to treat their illnesses without turning the city 
into a new Amsterdam.

City Atty. Carmen Trutanich is recommending a very cautious approach, 
with outright sales banned in favor of patient cooperatives. That 
comes as a jolt not just to recreational users but to patients who 
finally have safe and convenient access to pain relief and treatment. 
With the drug now so widely available, it would be hard to return to 
the days of cannabis clubs.

But Trutanich also points out that the marijuana being sold all over 
the city could (and he says in at least two test cases did) contain 
dangerous levels of pesticides and other contaminants, and that 
clinics may well get their stash from the same cartels that have 
wreaked so much havoc - and violence - in Mexico. It may not be the 
city's role to regulate the product or its importation, but what's 
the value of "compassionate use" for medical purposes if the product 
actually is poisonous and if clinics, rather than providing safety, 
are supplied by criminals?

Even if his advice to disallow sales is too draconian, Trutanich 
makes some valid points. It may be too late for Los Angeles to move 
slowly on medical marijuana, because hundreds of clinics are now 
operating. But it's not too late to move wisely, and with the safety 
and health of patients and other residents at the top of the agenda. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake