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The Slippery Slope of Marijuana Regulation
Posted by CN Staff on December 15, 2009 at 19:19:01 PT
By Tim Rutten
Source: Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles, CA -- There are about 120 Starbucks coffee outlets within the Los Angeles city limits. According to the most reliable estimates, there are somewhere between 900 and 1,000 medical marijuana dispensaries.Mull over the implications of that comparison and you're on the way to understanding why the City Council seems enmeshed in an endless wrangle over how to regulate the number and sites of the nonprofit cooperatives allowed by local ordinance to distribute cannabis to individuals with doctors' prescriptions. 
So far, it's been a debate whose observers could be forgiven for wondering whether they'd entered the council through a looking glass. All that's missing is the Hookah-smoking Caterpillar.Last week, for example, the lawmakers -- who are scheduled to take another cut at an ordinance today -- voted to cap the number of dispensaries at 70, though the 186 establishments that registered with the city after a poorly drafted 2007 "moratorium" on new dispensaries was ruled illegal will be allowed to stay open. Got that? The number is "capped" at 70, but 186 will be allowed to operate.Today, the council again will take on the vexing question of whether to increase the distance between dispensaries and schools, parks, churches and private residences.Councilman Jose Huizar told Time magazine this week that the council came up with a cap of 70 because that translates into two cooperatives for each of the city's community planning districts, which should allow for increased oversight, even in these cash-strapped times. As The Times previously has reported, "With no ordinance in place to control their location, dispensaries have clustered in some neighborhoods, such as Eagle Rock, Hollywood and Woodland Hills, drawn by empty storefronts or by proximity to night life."Maybe there's something to be said for medicine that gets sick people back on their feet and out for a little night life. Perhaps that's why marijuana advocates are concerned that if the council adopts a requirement that dispensaries be located at least 1,000 feet from any private residence, it will push them into the handful of industrial spaces on the city's margins. Perhaps.Meanwhile, county Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, who must have time on his hands since his office ran out of violent felonies, devastating financial frauds and political corruption to prosecute, has decided to make "an issue" of the dispensaries. He says that if the council's new ordinance diverges from the state statute, he'll "ignore their act and enforce the law." His protege, City Atty. Carmen Trutanich, is of one mind with the D.A. (Of course he is.)Frankly, they'll both need night-vision goggles to find the bright line in state law on this question. An official website maintained by the state attorney general, for example, says that even though federal authorities -- who flatly hold that cannabis has "no current effective medical use" -- argue that California's medical marijuana law contradicts the Controlled Substances Act, no such contradiction exists. That's because "California did not 'legalize' marijuana, but instead exercised the state's reserved powers to not punish certain marijuana offenses under state law when a physician has recommended its use to treat a serious medical condition." (In other contexts, that's the sort of reasoning that made "Jesuitical" and "Pharisaical" pejorative adjectives.)No one is quite sure how many of those physician recommendations have been made since 1996, when 55.6% of the state's voters approved Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act, and authorized medical marijuana prescriptions. At the moment, there are 300,000 patients registered as part of a voluntary program created by Senate Bill 240 in 2003. Tens of thousands are Los Angeles County residents.In 1996, medical marijuana was promoted as a substance that would alleviate the suffering of people going through chemotherapy or battling AIDS. Today, according to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, 40% of the prescriptions are for chronic pain, 22% for AIDS-related conditions, 15% for "mood disorders" and 23% for "other" illnesses. The source of the DEA's numbers? Why, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.The real reason the City Council is having such a hellish time coming to grips with this issue is that this is one of those areas where social attitudes and thinking simply have moved beyond conventional legal thinking or, for that matter, the permissible language of politics. Medical marijuana was, from the start, a back door to legalization, and now it's swung wide open. If we really believed cannabis was a normative medical remedy, it would be sold in pharmacies like everything else your doctor prescribes. Instead, the council is trying to regulate it in just the way we control bars or liquor stores or any other vendor of recreational intoxicants, while paying lip service to the really rather limited medicinal necessities.A recent Field Poll found that 60% of Los Angeles County voters and 56% statewide favor legalizing and taxing marijuana. As The Times reported Tuesday, a proposition to do both those things already has qualified for next year's ballot.In the meantime, the council would be well advised to ignore Cooley and Trutanich and adopt sensible regulations that treat the dispensaries pretty much like bars -- allowing them to operate in appropriate areas but not to become public nuisances.Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)Author: Tim RuttenPublished: December 16, 2009Copyright: 2009 Los Angeles TimesContact: letters latimes.comWebsite: http://www.latimes.com/URL: http://drugsense.org/url/8SUTLq0zCannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml
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Comment #9 posted by FoM on December 23, 2009 at 20:21:37 PT
Anaheim Case May Take Key Role in Regulating MMJ
December 24, 2009URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-medical-marijuana24-2009dec24,0,1416563.story
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Comment #8 posted by FoM on December 17, 2009 at 19:38:20 PT
Rethinking Marijuana in The Movies
December 18, 2009A minor ruckus has erupted in Hollywood over the R rating assigned to the Meryl Streep romantic comedy, "It's Complicated," as reported in The Times' Dec. 10 post on the Company Town blog, "It's complicated, but 'It's Complicated' will be released with an R rating." According to The Times, those familiar with the Motion Picture Assn. of America's hearing on the movie say a scene featuring "pot smoking with no bad consequences" was key to the decision. But imagine the ratings wars that the MPAA's latest warnings will ignite:URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-ablon18-2009dec18,0,1342906.story
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Comment #7 posted by FoM on December 16, 2009 at 19:50:07 PT
LA Council Delays Pot Clinic Ordinance 
LA Council Delays Pot Clinic Ordinance for RetoolingBy Rick Orlov, Staff WriterDecember 16, 2009All but five of Los Angeles' estimated 800 to 1,000 medical marijuana clinics would be forced to shut down or move under the latest restrictions being considered by the City Council, officials said Wednesday. The council had intended to reduce the number to no more than 137. But members learned that the actual rules they drafted, including keeping them away from schools and residential areas, went farther than they intended, making almost all of the city off-limits to the dispensaries. Despite mounting anger and frustration by both supporters and opponents of the clinics, the council pushed off final consideration of its law. URL: http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_14011436
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Comment #6 posted by kaptinemo on December 16, 2009 at 04:18:18 PT:
Djinns and bottles
"Hopefully they've dithered so long it may be too late to put the genie back in the bottle.It already is too late. The previously disinterested public has been forced to consider the necessity of tackling this issue, when prior to this time they relied upon their (self-serving) 'public servants' to handle the chore. But now it's become obvious that A) The public attitude concerning cannabis has always been far advanced of the legal system's (and this partly through the fact the generation that ignorantly supported the unnecessarily punitive laws is dying off)B) Because of A, a legal framework that can no longer encompass that changing attitude must change, itself.Djinns (a.k.a Genies') and bottles, cats and bags, water and bridges, spilled milk, etc. The cannabis laws are in the same situation. The time for change has come, and it cannot be denied. The people want it. And they will have their way. And woe betide the fool who thinks they can over-ride that 'will of the people'. They'll find that that public will can be expressed monetarily, as in firing them from their cushy jobs for daring to go against that political will. And in these harsh economic times, that can amount to a death sentence.
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Comment #5 posted by EAH on December 16, 2009 at 01:14:37 PT:
Who Benefits
Politicians operate on a who benefits model. That is, the moment it becomes absolutely clear that they will benefit from favorable actions regarding cannabis, that is when the right things will start to happen. The pols will have to feel empowered to go against the cops, DAs, and monied interests lined up against cannabis. At the moment the medical exception is forcing them to accommodate
the needs of patients even though the current dispensary model is not to their liking. Once they're fully convinced they will be re-elected and their images will not suffer in any way, then they'll turn.
Obviously they remain fearful of the imaginary opponent come election time that will run the "soft on crime" ads against them. So we have to go through this Kabuki theater of getting tough etc. Hopefully they've dithered so long it may be too late to put the genie back in the bottle.
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Comment #4 posted by Sinsemilla Jones on December 16, 2009 at 00:25:52 PT
Sounds good to me, Tim -
"...adopt sensible regulations that treat the dispensaries pretty much like bars -- allowing them to operate in appropriate areas but not to become public nuisances."In fact, I think that would work quite well for the rest of the world, too.
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Comment #3 posted by Sam Adams on December 15, 2009 at 21:23:55 PT
very pompous
"If we really believed cannabis was a normative medical remedy, it would be sold in pharmacies like everything else your doctor prescribes. Instead, the council is trying to regulate it in just the way we control bars or liquor stores or any other vendor of recreational intoxicants, while paying lip service to the really rather limited medicinal necessities."It's a wee bit more complicated than that! perhaps this guy needs to get off his high horse.  Who's "we"??? Does he expect the LA city council to take on the Big Pharma, the cops, and the alcohol industry all at once? They can barely keep the roads paved.There they go again - that the terrible scourge, cannabis dispensaries, taking over empty storefronts left and right! Somebody stop them before the economy recovers!
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Comment #2 posted by HempWorld on December 15, 2009 at 19:45:49 PT
Museman
Where art thou?
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Comment #1 posted by HempWorld on December 15, 2009 at 19:35:27 PT
Slippery Slope ...
Yeah baby!
Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
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