Council Needs More Time on Dispensary Plan
Ordinance comes after four years and six drafts.
By JONATHAN LLOYD
Updated 3:00 PM PDT, Thu, Jan 7, 2010
The LA City Council is gonig to need more time on this one.
Several members of the LA City Council Wednesday recommended a host of amendments to a proposal regarding the city's medicinal marijuana dispensaries. The City Council decided to postpone voting on the issue until Tuesday.
District Attorney Steve Cooley said his office will prosecute dispensaries that sell medical marijuana, regardless of the council's decision on an ordinance that does not ban such sales.
It could force hundreds of pot dispensaries out of business. The ordinance seeks to prohibit the sale of marijuana at clinics that have sprouted across the city over the past year. The ordinance would allow collectives, where pot is grown by members, to remain open but have to be at least 1,000 feet from schools, churches and hospitals
City Attorney Carmen Trutanich and Cooley recently said they would target stores that are profiting and selling to people who don't qualify for medicinal marijuana.
Cooley delivered fighting words after two city committees' decisions Monday to alter Trutanich's proposal. The committees changed a provision, allowing cash transactions that comply with state law.
"They're talking about money being paid for marijuana, but not in the context of a collective situation as authorized by Proposition 215," Cooley said Tuesday, referring to the 1996 voter-approved ballot measure that authorized individuals and collectives to possess, use and cultivate marijuana for medicinal purposes. "They're suggesting that the over-the-counter sales of marijuana if it's `not profit' -- which they've not defined -- somehow or another if you put that label on it, it's going to be legal. And they're wrong."
The district attorney said council members "may think this is a land- use issue or something they can regulate or control."
But, he said, "they have to start with the concept of 'What is the law, penal law, Health and Safety Code and the Constitution and the Medical Marijuana Act, (the) Compassionate Use Act, and how does it work,' and they seem to be clueless."
He chastised council members for ignoring Trutanich.
"They ignored their lawyers. They went off on their own path. They don't know where they're going, as usual, and we're trying to bring them back," he said. "Wake up, you took an oath to enforce the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the state of California, the laws of the state of California, last time I looked they trumped L.A. city's ordinance."
First Published: Nov 17, 2009 2:19 PM PDT
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