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Cities try to avoid medical pot issue

Activists fear backlash, cite Oakland marijuana dispensary laws as a model

5-2-2005 | Josh Richman | Oakland Tribune

A lawsuit filed last week against a Central Valley city signals medical marijuana advocates' growing concern over a municipal backlash against cannabis clubs up and down the state.
Oakland-based Americans for Safe Access sued Fresno last Monday for enacting a ban on medical marijuana dispensaries, which the group says violates California laws entitling patients and caregivers to the medicinal herb.

But almost nine years after Golden State voters approved a compassionate use law, what that law and a 2003 implementation law actually allow remains somewhat vague. Many cities, experiencingor fearing an explosion of dispensaries, recently have enacted moratoriums on any new ones to allow time for developing regulations.

"The last six months have shown a big increase in people feeling more courageous to try to open a local dispensary, and their inquiries to their cities is what has spurred a lot of these responses," said Americans for Safe Access organizer Hilary McQuie. "It became understood as the process, even though it's not necessary to have a moratorium just to develop regulations."

What's not permissible, she said, is an outright ban. "It's not appropriate, nor is it legal, to disallow dispensaries from operating in that locality."

Neither California's Proposition 25 of 1996, nor a 2003 law creating a photo-identification system for patients and caregivers, clearly addresses where and how patients and caregivers are to procure marijuana for medical use. The 2003 law, however, does provide that card-carrying patients who associate "in order collectively or cooperatively to cultivate marijuana for medical purposes" aren't subject to criminal punishment.

Fresno City Council last October passed an ordinance banning medical marijuana dispensaries that serve three or more patients; the city's police chief advised the council to pass it as a health and safety issue. A Fresno city spokesman didn't return a call seeking comment on the lawsuit Friday.

Meanwhile, dozens of California cities have put the brakes on any new dispensaries while they mull regulations. Rohnert Park on Tuesday became the latest, enacting a 45-day moratorium.

With cities and counties scrambling to develop their own dispensary policies, California seems poised to become a regulatory patchwork. Not a problem, McQuie said: "It's OK for local areas to have varying regulations around dispensaries just like local governments have zoning for other types of businesses."

Cities should look for an already-proven model, and McQuie said Oakland fits the bill. It's not perfect, she said — medical marijuana advocates still believe the city needs more than four clubs, with longer hours and fewer restrictions.

But a city report issued in early April found that "during their first seven months of operation, the permitted cannabis dispensaries have shown that, in general, they can function without creating a nuisance in the neighborhood or draining police resources." It also found "they likely increase the sales of other businesses in the neighborhood."

Other cities should put that in their pipes and smoke it, McQuie suggested, and "take courage from Oakland's example."

What California cities ought not to be doing is awaiting a U.S. Supreme Court decision in a case brought by patients Angel Raich and Diane Monson of Oakland and Oroville, respectively. That case deals only with Congress' authority to restrict wholly intrastate medical use of marijuana, and no matter how the court rules, California's laws will still stand, McQuie said.

"The outcome is irrelevant to dispensaries," she said. "Our fear is that local law enforcement won't understand that they're supposed to be following California law when there's a conflict between California and federal laws."

Actually, the state Attorney General's office might've said as much recently, acknowledging in a footnote to a brief in a case involving seizure of a patient's plants "that — both generally and in the specific context of interpreting the Compassionate Use Act — it is not the province of state court to enforce federal laws."

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frolic

Here come the scare tactics.

Medical marijuana has been in force for ten years and what was written loosly to cover the new field has been taken as weak. Someone must have thought that only the wild cities SF and north were going to open shops. The south, the freaks in LA, the chicanos in the barrios of SD, and all the rednecks and PU truck trivers from the deserts thought we were going to open up Amsterdam facilities, get busted by the police and the feds, closed down, and then things would go back to normal. Now ten years later and clinics are opening in Fresno, Bakersfield and Riverside. "Not Riverside" you say. Are there cowboys with cancer and aids? Are they too relieved by the loco weed?

So now all the wage slaves of the mountains and valleys are leaving the PTO meetings and organizing to deny Californians access to medecine they gained through legal channels. They voted for it. More Californians did then didn't they? They will say, "The state can't tell the cities what laws to obey and what businesses can open and close in the cities." But yes they can. That is what a law does. That is what our state constitution does. Provide the same laws in california to those living on mountains and those still hiding in holes.

The world is changing. I remember when Ronald Raygun BLAST was governor of California. The cops ran rampant. He would give that hollywood smile and say "Well?" as his head tottered; you saw it on national TV. What in sam hill does that mean. I believe that the alzhiemers began in Sacremento. Getting caught with pot then meant 18 months in jail. Well?

Now we purchase our medecine in clean well lighted establishments. We pay with cash, check or charge. We are tired of appologizing for being ill. All we want is a chance to treat our disease with the best medecines on the market. If my market comes out of my garden, Well?