California — Los Angeles city prosecutors began notifying 439 medical marijuana dispensaries Tuesday that they must shut down by June 7, when the city’s ordinance to regulate the stores takes effect. It’s the first step in what could be a lengthy and expensive legal battle to regain control over pot sales.

The letters, which were sent to both dispensary operators and property owners, warn that violations of the city’s laws are a misdemeanor and could lead to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Collectives that stay open after the deadline could also face civil penalties of $2,500 a day.

“We’re hopeful that the fact that we’ve given them more than 30 days to comply that a significant number of them will cease operating,” said Asha Greenberg, the assistant city attorney who has handled most of the efforts to close dispensaries.

Los Angeles became the epicenter of the state’s dispensary boom last year, following the Obama administration’s announcement that it would not prosecute medical marijuana stores that adhered to state law. Although the city had a moratorium on new dispensaries, it failed to enforce the ban and hundreds opened with no oversight, triggering complaints from neighborhood activists.

The letters were welcomed by city officials and activists as a sign that the contentious issue, which was first considered by the City Council five years ago, is nearing a resolution.

“We’ve arrived. It’s like being on a journey and saying, ‘Are we there yet? Are we there yet?’ ” said Councilman Ed Reyes, who oversaw the laborious process that led to an ordinance after two years of debate. “It feels good that we have finally reached this threshold.”

Michael Larsen, the incoming president of the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council, was the most tenacious spokesman for residents worried about unregulated dispensaries. “There’s actually something happening based on an ordinance that we worked very hard to get into place. On that level, I am relieved,” he said. “The truth about the actual enforcement, that will just be a big question mark.”

Under the new ordinance, only dispensaries that registered with the city after the council adopted the moratorium in 2007 will be allowed to operate. City officials estimate that more than 130 of the original 186 registered dispensaries are still in business.

The Los Angeles Police Department cased the city to try to find every dispensary. Estimates from city officials and medical marijuana activists had ranged as high as 1,000. But Capt. Kevin McCarthy, who heads the LAPD’s Gangs and Narcotics Division, said, “We came up with less than 600, which is good.”

Greenberg said the city attorney’s office will send out more letters if residents point out additional dispensaries. “We’re making our best efforts, and we’re using information from really our eyes and ears out there, which is the community,” she said.

The city’s enforcement efforts, however, could be stymied by court cases.

Two related lawsuits filed by dispensaries challenge the City Council’s decision to close stores that did not register under the moratorium, which a local judge ruled was illegally extended. “We’re looking for the court to just acknowledge that our clients are unlawfully discriminated against,” said David Welch, a lawyer who represents 36 dispensaries in the lawsuit.

Eric Shevin, another lawyer with experience in marijuana issues, is preparing to sue on behalf of patients. “We are putting together a very comprehensive lawsuit to strike down L.A.’s ordinance,” he said, arguing that the law imposes unreasonable restrictions on patient access to medicine. “There is really nothing that allows medical marijuana patients to be treated differently than, say, Vicodin patients.”

Los Angeles has tried twice to persuade dispensaries to shut down, with mixed results. City prosecutors sent letters last year ordering 53 stores to close after the City Council denied their applications to operate despite the ban, and 28 did so. Earlier this year, letters were sent to the landlords of 21 dispensaries targeted by LAPD undercover operations, and six stores closed.

McCarthy said he hopes most dispensaries will close voluntarily. He believes many operators are conscientious, but notes that others are not. “I don’t know what percentage of them are knuckleheads, and because the money is pretty good, we’re not going to get 100%” compliance, he said.

Noting that medical marijuana is not the narcotics division’s highest priority, he said it could take some time to determine which dispensaries remained open beyond the deadline. He said his officers would focus on the biggest nuisances: “Obviously, the ones that the community is screaming about are the ones we are going to go to first.”

Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Author: John Hoeffel, Los Angeles Times

San Jose took a step toward welcoming medical cannabis into its fair city on Tuesday night — 14 years after state voters approved medical cannabis, six months after pot clinics began sprouting up in Northern California’s largest city and about five months after a city council member openly declared the cash-strapped burg ought to do something about it all: namely, start taxing.

Via a 7-3 vote last night, the council essentially said, “Yes, we ought to do something about it, and we will — in June, when city staff comes back to us with a regulation and taxation plan that they’ll spend the next few months concocting.” Not exactly words to foment a revolution — but for those who’d like to see green generating green in San Jose, it’s a good day. “San Jose took a pragmatic step,” Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio said Wednesday. “We said, ‘We want a limited number of dispensaries in limited places, and we want them taxed.’”

Pot? Check. Taxes. Check. Step three: Profit.

Nothing left now but the wrangling over the details: minor points like what the business tax levied on dispensaries should be; if they should be restricted to industrial space in San Jose;  if there should be a strict cap on the number of dispensaries; if the permitting fee should be $10,000 or $30,000 per dispensary.

Wait, those are all major points, some with the ability to muck up the process entirely, said Lauren Vazquez of the Silicon Valley chapter of Americans for Safe Access. Lengthy haranguing over just those details is partially to blame for the drawn-out saga of dispensary regulation in Los Angeles, now at two years and counting. Did you ever think it’d be the marijuana advocates getting all serious and killing the buzz?

“We want to make sure [patients] are involved in the drafting process,” she said. “That way we can get an ordinance that’s reasonable, not too restrictive, and we’ll avoid a lot of the going back and forth.”

Vazquez listed the following as potential dealbreakers:

• An arbitrary cap on the number of dispensaries;

• Dispensaries restricted to industrial areas, which lack public transportation;

• Excessive permitting fees or businesses taxes (a 3 percent receipts tax on San Jose dispensaries has been suggested);

• Proceeds from pot taxes going to fund major unrelated city projects.

Problem is, most of these are to be found in the business models Oliverio and his colleagues have instructed city staff to follow when crafting San Jose’s ordinance. Oakland has a cap of four dispensaries and a business tax of 1.8 percent, for example.

In the meantime, Vazquez expects San Jose’s estimated 35 brick-and-mortar dispensaries expect to continue operating as they have before — with no regulation or taxation. Some have received cease-and-desist notices from the city threatening $2,500-per-day fines, but “I am not aware of anyone actually receiving a fine or closing down,” she said.

In other words, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

Source

Voters in California will likely decide this November whether or not to legalize marijuana, after legalization activists handed in far more than the necessary number of petition signatures to get the measure onto the ballot.

Organizers of the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 filed some 700,000 petition signatures with county clerks around the state. The amount of signatures needed to get the measure on the ballot is about 433,000, reports the San Francisco Chronicle, so the measure is all but certain to be on the ballot in November.

If California voters approve, it will be the most comprehensive reform of marijuana laws ever undertaken in the United States. While some states, such as Oregon, have relatively lax penalties for possession, no state has attempted to regulate and tax the herb before.

The measure’s chances are good: A poll taken last April found that 56 percent of Californians want to see the herb legalized and taxed.

According to the L.A. Times, the measure would make it legal for anyone over 21 to own an ounce or less of pot, and to grow pot for personal use in a space no larger than 25 square feet. It would also give cities the right to license marijuana growers and sellers, and to collect taxes on the crop.

One of the major talking points that the pro-legalization crowd has used has been finances. California’s government is facing a deep, prolonged budget crisis, and legalization proponents have argued that the revenue generated by taxing marijuana would bring an estimated $1.3 billion into state and municipal coffers.

Richard Lee, a medical marijuana entrepreneur from Oakland who is the principal backer of the movement, told the L.A. Times he plans to raise $10 million to $15 million to fight the legalization campaign. And Lee’s opponents are already beginning to line up to oppose the measure.

”We’re going to talk about blood money, about trying to raise taxes on the backs of our youth,” Bishop Ron Allen, head of the International Faith Based Coalition, told the Associated Press.

Another obstacle will be the conflict between state and federal law. Even if California passes the measure, marijuana will still be illegal under federal statutes. In an editorial this month, the L.A. Times argued:

Cannabis may be the nation’s largest cash crop, but marijuana remains a Schedule I drug, deemed by the federal government to have a high potential for abuse, no accepted medical value and illegal to use under all circumstances. Perhaps Californians have been emboldened by their pioneering role in legalizing medicinal marijuana, but in truth, the conflict between state and federal law has had serious consequences for users and distributors caught in the federal web.

But, in a rebuttal, Tamar Todd argued that “there is nothing in the US Constitution that requires states to criminalize anything. We could scrap our entire penal code tomorrow if we wanted to. States get to decide state law, not Washington.”

And Jacob Sullum at Reason.com argues that, while the feds may still want to enforce federal marijuana laws in California, they won’t have the resources to prosecute cases that were previously handled by state authorities.

via The Raw Story