Pubdate: Mon, 24 Sep 2012
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2012 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248

PUTTING A LID ON L.A.'S POT DISPENSARIES

It's too late for an outright ban. But the City Council can and 
should craft reasonable regulations.

The Los Angeles City Council first welcomed medical marijuana 
dispensaries, then tried to regulate them, then tried to ban them. 
The ban has now been suspended because opponents collected enough 
signatures to force a ballot referendum to overturn it, leaving the 
council with this quandary: Should it put the referendum on the 
ballot and hope to persuade voters to hold fast to a ban (and then 
figure out a way to enforce it); or should it lift the ban now, 
obviate the need for the public vote and then get back to the 
difficult work of drafting an effective and enforceable ordinance 
that both improves access for the medical patients who were the 
intended beneficiaries of the original law and protects neighborhoods 
from over-proliferation of poorly regulated dispensaries?

A few years ago, before the council blundered into the dispensary 
mess and invited legal challenges with poorly drafted ordinances, the 
answer might have been different.

But it's too late for a ban in Los Angeles. Marijuana, readily 
available to medical patients and others, has gained too strong a 
foothold in this city to be banished without an investment of police 
and other city resources that the council and mayor have so far shown 
no interest in allocating and that City Hall may, frankly, simply 
lack. The fact that advocates gathered as many signatures as they did 
in such a short time is strong evidence that pro-marijuana forces 
have organized, gained political allies and won substantial public support.

Besides, Californians have made clear their desire that marijuana be 
made available to medical patients.

Even if voters could be persuaded to uphold the council's ban, the 
city hasn't demonstrated much of an ability to close dispensaries. 
Besides, as with so many issues connected with medical marijuana, the 
ban is somewhat hazy. It's a ban that's not really a ban because it 
would permit certain small operations to open or to remain open. 
There are bound to be additional legal challenges. It would be 
smarter, and better policy, to go back to the drawing board and 
return with an ordinance to limit and regulate dispensaries - and a 
plan to enforce it.

There are many marijuana advocates who argue that the city's 
attempted ban was illegal and that those who brought it forward - 
Councilman Jose Huizar and City Atty. Carmen Trutanich - were 
mean-spirited or backward looking.

That's untrue.

A ban on over-the-counter, for-profit retail sales - and let's please 
be honest enough with ourselves to acknowledge that that's the 
business of the vast majority of so-called dispensaries - has 
unmistakable appeal. The legal landscape of medical marijuana has 
shifted drastically, in many directions, over the last several years.

Court rulings and enforcement patterns are bound to remain volatile 
for some time to come, because like it or not, marijuana remains a 
Schedule I drug under the federal Controlled Substances Act and is 
illegal in California as it is everywhere else in the country, 
notwithstanding the passage of Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use 
Act, in 1996.

The Los Angeles City Council once had a law that purported to 
regulate the locations and concentration of dispensaries, but it 
replaced that law with its now-suspended soft ban when courts 
overturned a parallel regulatory ordinance in Long Beach. An appeals 
court threw out the Long Beach law on the theory that, by saying 
where dispensaries could and could not operate, it was sanctioning 
illegal activity.

Los Angeles thought the soft ban might meet with more favor in the 
courts, but it turns out that bans, too, have been struck down as 
being outside the spirit of Proposition 215. So the ban may be no 
more enforceable than a limit, even if voters opt to uphold it at the 
ballot box.

Does that doom cities to allowing pretty much anything anywhere, and 
mean that they shouldn't even try to craft a rational regulation? It 
shouldn't. Parts of Los Angeles were once plagued by liquor stores 
that, although legal, became magnets for crime because of poor 
management or upkeep by owners.

Parking lots outside such stores became gathering points for gangs 
and open bazaars for illegal drug sales. The problem was addressed by 
rational land-use regulation: requirements for conditional use 
permits and variances, and the public hearings and other procedures 
that go along with such rules. Can Los Angeles do the same with 
marijuana dispensaries? It must try.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom