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WeHo Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Under Legal Siege
10/26/09 | WeHoNews.com | WeHo News Staff

West Hollywood, California (Monday, October 26, 2009) - Trying to forcefully wrest control of the illegal pot clubs popping up like mushrooms in a cow pasture after rain after a judge threw out the LA Council’s ban, LA City Attorney Trutanich and LA County District Attorney Steve Cooley weighed in with draconian lines of enforcement of state law that would put the vast majority – if not all – such facilities in the county out of business.

Mr. Cooley and Mr. Trutanich assert that over-the-counter sales of medical marijuana are illegal under their interpretation of Proposition 215 and AB420, which govern the availability and accessibility of the product through cooperatives of growers.

All of the dispensaries in West Hollywood operate as non-profits, accepting donations in exchange for the medicine.

Mr. Cooley said his strategy plain early last week at a news conference; all LA County medical marijuana dispensaries are operating illegally because money gets exchanged for medicine, and that "they are going to be prosecuted."

His office is already preparing to prosecute a Culver City medical marijuana facility.

A few days later, City Atty. Carmen Trutanich sent an ordinance to the LA City Council that could effectively outlaw most dispensaries in the city by prohibiting sales of medical marijuana. The LA City Council takes up the issue Tuesday, October 27.

No other municipality in the state (or in other states where medical marijuana is sold) has tried to ban sales of the product, essentially banning the business from within their borders.

His ordinances mandates that all currently operating dispensaries must close immediately and could not apply to reopen for six months.

The 186 dispensaries already registered with the city when it passed the 2007 moratorium would be allowed to remain open for those six months, but then would have to meet the ordinance's requirements.

The ordinance also would restrict the dispensaries' operations, allowing them to carry no more than 5 pounds of marijuana or 100 plants and preventing them from selling or manufacturing edible marijuana products.

JoAnna LaForce, owner/pharmacist of the Farmacy, with locations in both West Hollywood and Los Angeles (Brentwood & Venice), said her operations were doubly-endangered by the County DA’s and City Atty.’s initiatives.

She hoped that the city council’s ordinance could be turned back, but expressed concern over the result of Mr. Cooley’s prosecutions.

“We have to spend so much money on attorney’s, lobbyists’ and consultants’ fees,” she said, “and for a non-profit, as a member of the medical establishment and pharmacists, I want to see that money going to keeping the cost of the medicine down for the patient.”

The other drastic, and inconceivably high, hurdle facing a collective such as the Farmacy, would be the ordinance’s proposed mandate on all members of the collective being intimately involved with the cultivation process.

"That is directly contrary to the West Hollywood ordinance," she said.

If Messrs Cooley and Tranichs' initiative were to become reality, the first thing to suffer, she said, would be quality and safety controls. “Right now we sell only organic," product grown by people known to her who belong to the collective; she herself visits the farms to check out their operations.

"Most people don't want to,” grow for a collective, she said.

Putting her pharmacist’s hat on, she said that limiting the ways of consuming the medicine to smoking it left out many patients who can only imbibe it in a beverage or foodstuff.

“From a pharmacist’s point of view, it’s important to have as many routes of administration available as possible," she said, "such as edibles."

The Obama administration last Monday told federal authorities not to arrest or prosecute medical marijuana users and suppliers who aren't violating local laws.

The Justice Department's guidelines ended months of uncertainty over how far the Obama White House planned to go in reversing the Bush administration's position, which was that federal drug laws should be enforced even in California.

"It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana, but we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal," Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement.

The guidelines urge authorities to pursue cases involving violence, illegal use of firearms, selling marijuana to minors, excessive financial gains and ties to criminal enterprises.

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