Los Angelenos: Please unite to save Medical Marijuana!

[MoeOnTheMoon]

City Attorney Trutanich [reminds me of Titanic, he's a disaster!] is doing his best to go against the wishes and votes of the People of California by banning medical marijuana sales. It's all a game of his interpreting the law his way and trying to make it so dispensaries cannot survive.
Here's part of an article I copied from http://www.safeaccessnow.org/article.php?id=5844:

"Los Angeles, CA -- Medical marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access (ASA) has threatened to file a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles if it adopts an ordinance that bans the "sale" of medical marijuana. The Los Angeles City Council is expected to vote as early as Wednesday on a medical marijuana dispensary ordinance proposed late Friday by City Attorney Carmen Trutanich. The proposed ordinance states that, "No sale of marijuana or of products containing marijuana shall be allowed, nor shall the manufacture of marijuana products for sale be permitted."
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If you want to help save safe access to medical marijuana - which is helping the cause for eventually legalizing it for everyone, everywhere - please write all the City Council members below and ask them NOT to approve the City Attorney's latest draft nor any draft that seeks to ban dispensaries from selling medical marijuana.

It's really easy: Just copy and paste this list, below into your email "To:" box, copy what I've written below into your message body, give your L.A. address and send it!

Copy this to your To box:
councilman.rosendahl@lacity.org; councildistrict2@lacity.org; councilmember.alarcon@lacity.org; Paul.Koretz@lacity.org; councilmember.labonge@lacity.org; councilmember.cardenas@lacity.org; councilmember.garcetti@lacity.org; councilmember.hahn@lacity.org; councilmember.huizar@lacity.org; councilmember.parks@lacity.org; jan.perry@lacity.org; councilmember.reyes@lacity.org; councilmember.smith@lacity.org; councilmember.wesson@lacity.org; councilmember.zine@lacity.org

Copy this for the Subject box: Vote NO on latest medical marijuana draft by Trutanich

Copy this for the message body:
Please do NOT approve the latest draft the City Attorney has proposed re medical marijuana rules. This draft runs contrary to the will of the voters of California and Los Angeles, and any council members who vote for it will be remembered and campaigned against during the next election.

Any draft must include provisions for the sale of medical marijuana in order to be accepted.

Thank you.

Los Angeles, CA

 

[stinkmeaner]

These people will stop at nothing to regulate an almost harmless plant when they freely sell alcohol to anyone, a product which causes so many deaths and addictions. Has anybody asked Obama why they allow this hypocrisy?

 

[MoeOnTheMoon]

Obama seems to be on our side - at least to the degree he can be. He told the Feds that he didn't want them wasting their time enforcing pot laws.

You're right - it truly seems insane that ANYone is making a stink about medical marijuana, or marijuana in general.

Alcohol is one thing, but cigarettes are even more deadly and kill even more people than alcohol.

We all know that millions of people die each year from cigarettes and alcohol.

Know how many have died from marijuana?

Zero point zero.
Zip.
Zilch.
None!

 

[lwien]

Going on right now if you want to watch it:

http://lacity.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=130&event_id=3

 

[MoeOnTheMoon]

They still have some crazy ideas about how mmj should be handled here, but at least they've agreed to NOT go along with the most insane part of the City Attorney's plan, to make the exchange of marijuana for cash illegal. (!?) But we still have work to do in making sure the Council does not pass the following proposed regulations:

"The council also agreed to make dispensary records (excluding patient's medical records)
easily accessible to law enforcement, to limit operators to ownership of one dispensary and patients and caregivers to membership in one collective except in the case of emergency. Another point of contention during the meeting was whether to keep the draft ordinance's provision that collectives possess no more than five pounds of marijuana and grow it on-site. Councilman Jose Huizar was fearful of encouraging a black market by allowing for greater quantities, but Councilman Ed Reyes felt that severely limiting the amounts of pot that could be on the premises could "choke it to the point where it does not function."

So there's still some KRAZY SHIT in there, and we have to keep writing the Council Members to let them know that this is crazy shit!

Here's the full article: http://tinyurl.com/ycgdsf7 Below: (from the Examiner.com web site, written by Ruth Denburg Yoshiwara

"Deciding that medical marijuana dispensaries in the city can accept cash in exchange for drugs, Los Angeles moved much closer on Tuesday to its goal of enacting an ordinance to regulate its store-front medical marijuana dispensaries .

In an all-day meeting, the City Council approved a provision that would allow "cash contributions, reimbursements and compensations" that were in accord with state law. Since state law is fuzzy on that issue, the Council also voted to ask California attorney general Jerry Brown to issue further guidelines clarifying whether state law allows the sale of marijuana.

In 2008, Brown issued guidelines that presumed the sale of marijuana, but subsequent court decisions threw doubt on that conclusion. A spokesman for the attorney general's office negated a radio announcer's report that the AG had said all sales were illegal. That report had been referred to
throughout the day by the city attorneys office and some council members. The council was careful to avoid using the word "sales" in its proposed ordinance.

It looks like the council will also put a cap on the number of dispensaries that can legally operate in the city. Currently there are an estimated 800 to 1000 locations, which will probably be reduced to a number between 70 and 200. The council asked for studies on caps and on restrictions that would keep dispensaries 500 feet from schools and parks and 1000 feet from any other dispensaries. The council is conflicted over how to decide which of the current dispensaries would be culled as a result of the cap, with Councilwoman Janice Hahn noting that it would be fair to favor those 186 dispensary operators who had followed the law by registering with the city when the moratorium went into effect in 2007, but others, such as Councilman Richard Alarcon, not being committed to a certain number.

The council also agreed to make dispensary records (excluding patient's medical records)
easily accessible to law enforcement, to limit operators to ownership of one dispensary and patients and caregivers to membership in one collective except in the case of emergency. Another point of contention during the meeting was whether to keep the draft ordinance's provision that collectives possess no more than five pounds of marijuana and grow it on-site. Councilman Jose Huizar was fearful of encouraging a black market by allowing for greater quantities, but Councilman Ed Reyes felt that severely limiting the amounts of pot that could be on the premises could "choke it to the point where it does not function."

Amendments easily agreed upon were requirements that dispensaries hire unarmed security guards to patrol a two-block radius near the dispensary, to provide a contact name to police and residents who live within 500 feet, and to deposit cash at least once daily. The council will meet again next Wednesday, to consider the additional research it requested and hopefully, to move even closer to completing a draft ordinance."
written by Ruth Denburg Yoshiwara - Examiner.com

 

[Cr8z13]

Glad I live in OC and not LA, but I'll be keeping an eye on this story.

 

[Durden]

The OC will end up following whatever LA (or whichever city designs the first fully functioning system) decides on doing. Several cities in the OC like Anaheim and HB already have zoning restrictions that make any club in the city limits illegal based on land use issues. Hopefully with more sensible guidlines, like the 1000 feet change to 500 feet from sensitive areas etc., the OC will have some legitimate structure to follow and the collectives wont have to be operating in either secrecy or in direct conflict with the city government.

Personally the only significant issues I have with the new draft is the one collective per patient and the growing on site issues. Seems like it's going to prop up a limited amount of clubs with overinflated demand and drive the prices even higher than they are currently. I guess since it will only be one collective IN LA, and other neighboring cities will have clubs I can still go to it wont be that bad, but it goes contrary to the whole safe and easy access issue.
It's ridiculous how many walgreens and other drug stores I drive by to go to my club, the local pumpkin/christmas tree lot has even been taken over by a walgreens this last year, and there are 2 more of them within a 5 minute drive already. The councilmen complain about not wanting to follow a starbucks model, well Ive got news for them the entire medical industry uses the starbucks model, including drive through windows and 'combo meal' discounts for filling multiple prescriptions.

In the end though, cities don't have a right to contradict state law like states have the right contradict federal law, so until a law (or interpretation) gets handed down from the state level this fight will continue with no clear winners.

 

[MoeOnTheMoon]

Durden - I basically agree with what you said and you sound pretty informed on the issues.
It doesn't bother you that LE will have access to our files? I mean, I know they kinda do anyway, but at least the way it is now they'd have to get a court order which means they'd have to have a reason. But it sounds like the new system proposed would just allow any officer to walk in and get the info. To me, that opens up too many possibilities for just anyone to get the info.

The "only one" dispensary thing seems totally asinine. All that would do is allow dispensaries to charge higher prices and stock less choices. I mean, what if they said "You can only go to one drugstore chain to get your prescription meds"? The one good thing is that there are other communities around here where - at least for now - we could go, in the L.A. area to get more choice. Unless they also make a law that we can't go outside our own communities for our meds...

And what would constitute an "emergency" that would allow you to go to a 2nd dispensary??!

 

[Beezleb]

I dont have a real opinion on everything as it does not affect me and I follow with interest only as I watch my state grapple with the decision to do it or not with medical weed.

I wonder why they want access to the files and to what extent are these files? In essence what can result from it. I am certainly not for law enforcement having any irregular access that would not be normal.

The one pharmacy thing I think is like how many states do it for narcotics. They stipulate what pharmacy you can buy it at, which is your pharmacy of choice but they write on the prescription to only fill at a specific pharmacy chain. Such as fill "only at Walgreens" if thats your pharmacy. I dont really understand the concept for it with weed as I believe with narcotics it is to keep people from going to multiple pharmacies or something underhanded to get more by duplicating the script so im not sure how it relates to this. If its meant to be similar to the narcotic rules of some states the emergency would be that the dispensary would be out of medicine I think as thats the only way a narcotic can be filled at another pharmacy chain as far as I know.