A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge Friday ordered an Eagle Rock dispensary to stop selling medical marijuana in a decision city prosecutors believe is the first to conclude that state law does not allow collectives to sell the drug.

Judge James C. Chalfant's preliminary injunction applies only to Hemp Factory V, a small outlet on Colorado Boulevard near the Glendale border, but would have a dramatic impact on how medical marijuana is distributed if a higher court upholds it. The decision came in the pretrial phase of the city's lawsuit against the dispensary.

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Initiative Backers Gather What Is Likely to Be Enough Signatures to Put Their Measure on the California Ballot in November.

Proponents of an initiative to make California the first state to legalize marijuana have collected about 693,800 signatures, virtually guaranteeing that the measure will appear on a crowded November ballot.

"This is a historic first step toward ending cannabis prohibition," said Richard Lee, the measure's main backer.

Advocates, trailed by television cameras and photographers, dropped off petitions with elections officials in the state's largest counties, including Los Angeles, where organizers said 143,105 voters signed.

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City Council Passes an Ordinance That Will Close Hundreds of Dispensaries and Limit Where They Operate.

The Los Angeles City Council, without debate, gave final approval Tuesday to a medical marijuana ordinance that will impose some of the toughest rules in the state but was assailed by advocates who said the law will drastically restrict access to the drug.

The measure, which was finally passed more than 4 1/2 years after the council started to discuss the issue, will do little to calm the contentious debate over how Los Angeles should restrain a dispensary boom that has seen hundreds of pot stores cluster on the city's major boulevards.

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California Supreme Court Invalidates a 2003 Provision That Capped Possession at Eight Ounces.

The Justices Unanimously Declare Unconstitutional a 2003 Provision That Capped Possession at Eight Ounces and Cultivation at Six Mature or 12 Immature Plants.

In a unanimous decision filed Thursday, the California Supreme Court struck down the state's specific limits on how much medical marijuana a patient can possess, concluding that restrictions imposed by the Legislature were an unconstitutional amendment of a voter-approved initiative.

The decision, which affirmed an appellate decision, means people who have a doctor's recommendation to use marijuana can possess and cultivate as much as is "reasonably necessary."

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Hundreds Would Close; Those Remaining Would Operate Under Tight Rules. Enforcement May Be a Challenge.

The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to adopt a comprehensive medical marijuana ordinance that clamps strict controls on dispensaries, which have spread with a velocity that stunned city officials and angered some residents.

Settling the last controversial issue on its list, the council decided to require the stores to locate at least 1,000 feet from so-called sensitive uses, such as schools, parks, libraries and other dispensaries. The decision to reject a 500-foot setback reflected the council's intent to write the most restrictive rules that would still allow dispensaries.

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The Los Angeles City Council decided Wednesday to prohibit medical marijuana dispensaries next to residences, but rejected a proposal to keep them at least 500 feet away, which would have drastically limited the available locations.

The council, however, put off a vote on the last contentious issue until Tuesday, when it will decide whether dispensaries must be 500 feet or 1,000 feet from so-called sensitive uses, such as schools, parks and religious institutions.

After a monthlong hiatus from the issue, the council had been expected to vote on the ordinance Wednesday.

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The State's Wording Is Interpreted Differently by Marijuana Backers, Foes. Lawmakers Seem Disinclined to Clarify.

Prosecutors in Los Angeles insist that collectives cannot sell medical marijuana at their stores and can provide it only to members who actively cultivate it together. Dispensary operators, on the other hand, argue that it is absurd to expect them to run Soviet-style collective farms and to rule out cash payments for pot.

When the Los Angeles City Council finishes its marijuana ordinance, which may finally happen this month, it is likely to inflame this increasingly contentious debate over how the drug can be distributed.

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A state appeals court appears likely to grapple with the dispute over whether cities and counties can prohibit medical marijuana dispensaries as it reviews a lawsuit challenging Anaheim's ban, a case that could have a major impact on how the drug is distributed throughout California.

On Monday, the day before their decision was due, judges in the Santa Ana-based appellate court asked the lawyers involved in the case for more information on what the Legislature intended when it wrote the 2003 medical marijuana law.

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California voters could decide whether to legalize marijuana in November after supporters announced Monday that they have more than enough signatures to ensure that it qualifies for the ballot.

The petition drive has collected more than 680,000 signatures, said Richard Lee, the measure's main proponent, about 57% more than the 433,971 needed.

"It was so easy to get them," Lee said. "People were so eager to sign."

The initiative would allow cities and counties to adopt laws to allow marijuana to be grown and sold, and to impose taxes on marijuana production and sales. It would make it legal for anyone who is at least 21 to possess an ounce of marijuana and grow plants in an area of no more than 25 square feet for personal use.

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A City Council Vote Allows 137 Marijuana Dispensaries to Remain, With a Target of 70.

The Los Angeles City Council took several key steps Tuesday toward completing an ordinance that would regulate the city's multiplying medical marijuana dispensaries, voting to sharply limit the number and location of stores.

The decisions, reached after hours of often heated debate, came more than 4 1/2 years after the council first looked at the issue. At that time, there were four known dispensaries in the city. Hundreds opened while the city failed to enforce a moratorium on dispensaries and pass an ordinance.

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Delay Arises From Fears That the Measure Would Effectvely Ban the Outlets in Most Areas of the City.

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday shunted a vote on its much-delayed medical marijuana ordinance most likely into next year, worried that the draft proposal could eliminate most dispensaries and lead to just a few "big-box" pot stores in isolated industrial areas.

The unexpected decision slowed the breakneck schedule the council had adhered to in recent weeks in its drive to pass an ordinance before the end of the year. The council has been on fast-forward since October, when a judge ruled that the city's moratorium on dispensaries was invalid, leaving Los Angeles with almost no power to shut down hundreds that have opened without permission in the last two years.

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A Judge Concludes That State Law Does Not Allow Marijuana to Be Sold. Another Hearing Is Set for January.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, concluding that state law does not allow medical marijuana to be sold, proposed an injunction Tuesday that would order an Eagle Rock dispensary to cease selling it.

"I don't believe that a storefront dispensary that sells marijuana is lawful," said Judge James C. Chalfant at a hearing on a lawsuit that City Atty. Carmen Trutanich filed Oct. 28 against Hemp Factory V.

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Council Members Also Signal That They May Cap Dispensaries at Between 70 and 200.

Dispensaries in Los Angeles could continue to accept cash for medical marijuana under a provision approved by the City Council on Tuesday, after it adopted language carefully crafted to maneuver past the city attorney's adamant position that state law bars the sale of the drug.

Plowing through more than 50 proposed changes to its draft medical marijuana ordinance, the council also signaled that it would probably cap the total number of dispensaries at between 70 and 200. The council asked city officials to return next Wednesday with studies on caps and on restrictions that would keep dispensaries either 500 feet or 1,000 feet from places such as schools and parks. The council also added new restrictions on dispensaries and rejected efforts to loosen requirements.

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The Council Could Cap the Number of Outlets or Set Distance Limits Between Dispensaries.

For a moment two years ago, Los Angeles officials thought they knew how many marijuana dispensaries the city had: 186. That's how many registered to operate under the city's moratorium. The city quickly lost control, and the number soared: 500, 600, 800, now perhaps 1,000.

On Tuesday, the City Council will grapple with a question it has barely debated since the number started to rise: How many is too many?

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Despite Prosecutor's Criticism, Dispensary Sales Likely to Get OK.

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday postponed a vote on a medical marijuana ordinance, with members saying they needed time to study numerous proposed amendments.

But council members, who will return to the measure Tuesday, pressed for a quick end to a drawn-out deliberation that has unfolded as hundreds of dispensaries opened.

"I think that we need to act relatively quickly," said council President Eric Garcetti. "We need some protection in there now to improve what's out there. We also need to be able to deter bad operators."

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Cooley Says He Will Ignore City Laws and Prosecute Dispensaries.

With the Los Angeles City Council poised to take up a medical marijuana ordinance after two years of contentious debate, L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley warned Tuesday that he intends to prosecute dispensaries that sell the drug even if the city's leaders decide to allow those transactions.

"The L.A. City Council should be collectively ashamed of their failure to grasp this issue," Cooley said, arguing that state laws do not allow medical marijuana to be sold. "Undermining those laws via their ordinance powers is counterproductive, and quite frankly we're ignoring them. They are absolutely so irrelevant it's not funny."

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West Hollywood Enforces a Strict Ordinance and Eliminates the Drama That Plagues L.A.

A few miles from Los Angeles City Hall, a small experiment in marijuana regulation has been underway for years. While the state's largest city passed a flawed moratorium, failed to enforce it, debated proposed rules endlessly and watched flummoxed as dispensaries multiplied, West Hollywood pressed ahead.

Confronted with its own dispensary explosion in 2005, the city surrounded by L.A. imposed a moratorium on dispensaries, clamped interim rules on the ones that were open, passed a strict ordinance and capped the number allowed at four, all within two years.

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Rejecting Advice to Ban Sales, L.A. City Concil Panels Endorse Patient's Cash Contributions.

Two Los Angeles City Council committees rejected the advice of the city attorney and voted Monday to approve an ordinance that allows marijuana dispensaries to continue to sell the drug to people with a doctor's recommendation.

The city attorney's office has maintained for a year and a half that Los Angeles has no choice but to ban sales because state law and court decisions are clear that collectives can only cultivate marijuana. That opinion had stalled the council's deliberations because dispensary operators insisted it would force them to close.

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The Los Angeles city attorney's office on Friday submitted a new draft medical marijuana ordinance that could resolve some contentious issues but adds new complications, such as raising the idea of capping the number of dispensaries by council district or community plan area.

The latest draft clarifies that edible marijuana products will be allowed. It also removes a provision that would have required collectives to provide lists of members, which dispensary operators had strenuously opposed, arguing it would violate federal privacy laws.

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The AMA Wants More Research on Cannabis Medicines and a Lesser Drug Classification.

The American Medical Assn. on Tuesday urged the federal government to reconsider its classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no accepted medical use, a significant shift that puts the prestigious group behind calls for more research.

The nation's largest physicians organization, with about 250,000 member doctors, the AMA has maintained since 1997 that marijuana should remain a Schedule I controlled substance, the most restrictive category, which also includes heroin and LSD.

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As hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries have opened this year in a startling rollout across California, unnerved local officials have started to push back aggressively.

Many cities and a few counties have banned them. Others have imposed emergency moratoriums. And some have started to sue dispensaries to force them to close. So far, the state's courts have sided with local officials.

For marijuana advocates, who have seen over-the-counter sales become commonplace and watched the steady drift of California's vibrant weed counterculture into the mainstream, these setbacks are a discordant development.

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The city's proposed medical marijuana ordinance, under construction for more than two years, will be debated again Nov. 16 at a joint hearing of two City Council committees.

Councilmen Ed Reyes and Greg Smith, chairmen of the planning and the Public Safety committees, respectively, are hoping to resolve some of key issues before the measure goes to the full council.

Some of the issues the council is still trying to decide: how to ensure that medical marijuana is not being sold for profit in violation of state law; whether to require dispensaries to provide names of their patients and growers; and how far the stores should be required to stay from schools and places where children gather.

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Los Angeles County, which has seen a whirlwind expansion in medical marijuana dispensaries this year, has notched another marijuana milestone. The county has moved to No. 5 for the amount seized in the state's annual eradication campaign, with 340,187 pot plants uprooted - -- more than a fourfold increase.

Statewide, the 27-year-old effort, known as the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, found and destroyed almost 4.5 million plants in 41 counties, up from 2.9 million seized in each of the two prior years' growing season. The amount has climbed steadily since 1996, the year California voters approved the nation's first medical marijuana law.

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This was to be the week that the Los Angeles City Council, spurred by a judge's ruling that its moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries was invalid, was to take action. But it won't be this week. Or even next week. And it probably won't be the week after.

Councilman Ed Reyes, who is overseeing the development of an ordinance on the dispensaries, said Tuesday that he decided it would not be wise to send the draft to the council without trying to resolve several complicated and contentious issues.

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A Proposal to Ban All Sales of Medicinal Marijuana Unlikely to Be Taken Up Next Week.

The Los Angeles City Council moved Thursday to consider a controversial medical marijuana ordinance in early November, as a poll released by a national organization that supports marijuana legalization found that more than three-quarters of voters in the county want dispensaries regulated, not prosecuted and closed.

The council action comes after a Superior Court judge ruled Monday that the city's moratorium on dispensaries had been illegally extended. With the city unable to enforce it, Councilman Greig Smith decided Thursday not to hold a hearing on the proposed ordinance in the Public Safety Committee, but to send it straight to the council.

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A Superior Court Judge's Decision Undercuts the City's Drive to Shut Hundreds of New Dispensaries.

Los Angeles' ban on new medical marijuana dispensaries is invalid, a Superior Court judge said Monday in a decision that undermines the city's 4-month-old drive to shut down hundreds of the stores.

The judge issued an injunction banning enforcement of the moratorium against Green Oasis, a dispensary in Playa Vista that had challenged the ban. But city officials acknowledged the ruling would effectively block current efforts to enforce the ban against other dispensaries.

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Cooley Says the Vast Majority of Medical Marijuana Dispensaries in L.A. County Are Operating Illegally.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said Thursday he will prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries for over-the-counter sales, targeting a practice that has become commonplace under an initiative approved by California voters more than a decade ago.

"The vast, vast, vast majority, about 100%, of dispensaries in Los Angeles County and the city are operating illegally, they are dealing marijuana illegally, according to our theory," he said. "The time is right to deal with this problem."

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He and Other L.A. Legal Officials Say State Law Allows Collectives to Grow and Distribute - but Not Sell or Buy - Medical Marijuana.

At hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles, cash is changing hands, typically about $45 for an eighth of an ounce.

The dispensary owners call it a donation because state law requires their stores to operate as nonprofit collectives. But their critics - -- police, the district attorney and the newly elected city attorney - -- insist that it's a sale and that marijuana sales remain illegal under state law.

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Medical Marijuana Collectives' Suit Comes As the City Struggles to Write a New Ordinance.

A newly formed association of Los Angeles medical marijuana collectives has challenged the city's efforts to control dispensaries, claiming in a lawsuit that the 2-year-old moratorium is unconstitutionally vague and that the City Council violated state law when it extended the ban until mid-March.

The lawsuit, filed late Monday, is the first to take aim at the city's attempts to halt the explosive growth in dispensaries. It comes as the City Council's Planning Committee continued Tuesday to struggle with a permanent ordinance to replace the moratorium.

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As the City Council begins closing illegal sellers, marijuana advocates propose an idea that's being discussed statewide.

The same day the Los Angeles City Council took its first votes to shut down rogue medical marijuana dispensaries, the chamber roiled with city workers who denounced plans to balance the budget with furloughs and layoffs.

When medical marijuana advocates had their chance to talk, they seized on the coincidence and startled the council with their message. Don't ban us, they said, tax us.

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Seeking new revenue for the city, Councilwoman Janice Hahn proposed Wednesday that the council consider imposing a tax on sales of medical marijuana.

Los Angeles has hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries. As California's local and state governments look to plug their budget deficits, attention has started to focus on marijuana as an untapped source. Oakland voters will decide Tuesday on a medical marijuana tax.

"In this current economic crisis, we need to get creative about how we raise funds," Hahn said in a statement. "A tax on medical marijuana could enable the city to continue providing services we might otherwise have to cut."

Hahn's motion was supported by Councilmen Dennis Zine and Bill Rosendahl.

[end]

A city inspector dropped by the Bulldog Cafe Collective on Melrose Avenue last week to see if it was still in business. It was. Inside the spare, modern interior, dusky green marijuana buds were still displayed in plastic jars. An owner who is often at the store tweezed whimsically named strains into small vials for customers.

The store near Hancock Park is among the first 14 medical marijuana dispensaries targeted for extinction by a City Council chagrined that it allowed hundreds to open in Los Angeles despite a 21-month-old moratorium.

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The City Council Eliminates a Provision in the 2007 Moratorium That Allowed Outlets With Pending Applications to Stay Open. The City Will Continue to Work Toward a Permanent Ordinance.

Seeking to halt the spread of medical marijuana dispensaries, the Los Angeles City Council on Friday sealed a legal loophole that had allowed hundreds to operate in open violation of the city's moratorium.

The council now faces the daunting task of trying to shut down these dispensaries.

By Friday, 665 had applied to the City Council for exemptions from the moratorium. Most opened without permission. As the first step to closing them, the council must act on each request.

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The Number of Stores in the City Has Tripled, to Nearly 600, Since the City Council Imposed a Moratorium on New Outlets in 2007.

Stunned by the spread of medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles, the City Council moved Tuesday to close a loophole that had encouraged their rapid growth.

The council also rejected a dozen applications from dispensaries that sought permission to operate despite the city's moratorium and prepared to extend the ban for six months beyond its expiration in September.

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The City Council Plans to Start Reviewing Requests for Exemption From a Moratorium Enacted in 2007.

With hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles operating in violation of a moratorium, the City Council will start the process of shutting some down Tuesday by voting on exemption requests filed by 16 dispensaries.

Most, if not all, of the requests probably will be denied because the dispensaries did not register with the city by the moratorium's deadline in 2007. A denial would allow the city to take legal steps to force them to close.

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L.A.'S Moratorium on Medical Pot Outlets Instead Allowed a Glut.

Four years ago, when the Los Angeles City Council started to wrestle with how to control medical marijuana, there were just four known storefront dispensaries, one each in Hancock Park, Van Nuys, Rancho Park and Cheviot Hills.

Now, police say there are as many as 600. There may be more. No one really knows.

That exponential rise came despite a moratorium passed in 2007 that was supposed to prohibit new dispensaries from opening. An exception was made for 186 that were already in business and registered with the city.

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