Oppose AB 2650 – Protect patients’ access statewide!

Oppose AB 2650 – Protect patients’ access statewide 

April 10th, 2010, Posted by Don Duncan

On Tuesday (April 13, 2010) , the California Assembly Committee on Public Health will discuss AB 2650, bill that would require that medical cannabis collectives, cooperatives, and growers be located at least 1,000 feet away from a laundry list of “sensitive uses” everywhere in the state. The bill was introduced unexpectedly this week by Assembly Member Joan Buchanan (D-Alamo). AB 2650 is sponsored by the Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORCA), a law enforcement lobby organization that opposes medical cannabis, and mirrors a controversial ordinance recently adopted in the City of Los Angeles.

ASA opposes AB 2650, and we are calling on our members in California to tell their Assembly representatives on the committee to vote no. Find out if your Assembly representative is on the Public Health Committee, and tell him or her to oppose AB 2650!

AB 2650 requires legal collectives and cooperatives to be located more than 1,000 feet from schools, parks, libraries, places of worship, child care facilities, youth centers, drug treatment centers, and other collectives or cooperatives. This is unnecessary to protect public welfare, and will make finding a location for a legal collective or cooperative unduly burdensome in most jurisdictions.  It also serves to usurp the authority of city and county government to make ordinary land use decisions based on the local circumstances.

ASA is the nation’s largest organization of patients, medical professionals, scientists and concerned citizens promoting safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research. We work in partnership with state, local and national legislators to overcome barriers and create policies that improve access to cannabis for patients and researchers. Crime statistics and the accounts of local officials surveyed by ASA indicate that crime is actually reduced by the presence of a collective; and complaints from citizens and surrounding businesses are either negligible or are significantly reduced with the implementation of local regulations.

In Oakland, where collectives have been licensed since 2004, City Administrator Barbara Killey, notes that “The areas around the dispensaries may be some of the safest areas of Oakland now because of the level of security, surveillance, etc…since the ordinance passed.” In the City of Los Angeles, Police Chief Charlie Beck told reporters and the City Council that the claim that patients’ associations attract crime “doesn’t really bear out.” In fact, the overall crime rate in Los Angeles dropped during the proliferation of collectives and cooperatives in that city. Given that effective local regulations address public safety concerns, there is no public safety rationale for a statewide policy keeping collectives and cooperatives away from sensitive uses.

This is not just an issue of public safety. Most of California’s legal medical cannabis patients rely on dispensing collectives or cooperatives to obtain the doctor-recommended medicine they need to treat the symptoms of HIV/AIDS, cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, chronic pain, and other serious illnesses. These patients’ associations are legal under California law, and California Attorney General Jerry Brown published guidelines in August 2008 that state “a properly organized and operated collective of cooperative that dispenses medical marijuana through a storefront may be lawful under California law,” provided the facility substantially complies with the guidelines. It is already hard enough to find a location for a legally organized and operated medical cannabis association. AB 2650 will make this task even more difficult – thus diminishing safe and legal access to medicine in communities statewide.

A restriction like that imposed by AB 2650 may be motivated by a misunderstanding about the state law concerning patients’ associations or by ambivalence about medical cannabis use in general. ASA calls on members of the Public Safety Committee to look past the stigma that sometimes underlies the debate about medical cannabis regulations, and to vote no on AB 2650 – a bill that is unnecessary for public welfare, interferes in local regulation, and is harmful to legal medical cannabis patients.

Find out if your Assembly representative is on the Public Safety Committee and what you can do to help.

Judge won't dismiss medical marijuana case under Obama made me do it defense.

Greg Moran, San Diego Union Tribune
Tuesday, March 16, 2010


James Stacy, the Vista medical marijuana dispensary owner facing federal drug charges, has lost an intriguing bid to have the charges against him thrown out.

Stacy had argued that President Obama, when he was Candidate Obama, had basically said he wouldn't prosecute medical marijuana providers who were complying with state law, and that Stacy had relied on that -- and later statements by Attorney General Eric Holder -- to launch his business.

He also said the prosecution violated the Tenth Amendment because it "commandeered" local law enforcement to enforce federal policy. The intriguing arguments received some attention after first being reported by San Diego CityBeat in December.

In an 11-page ruling Moskowitz said, essentially, nice try.

Comments made by Obama and one of his campaign flaks cited by Stacy "cannot be deemed representations of the federal government regarding drug-prosecution policy." There's no evidence Stacy even heard those statements or that any government official told him selling medical marijuana was OK under federal policy. Holder's statements were "vague," "loose" and did not rule out that the feds could still prosecute medical marijuana cases.

As for the Tenth Amendment argument, the judge said there was no evidence that the San Diego Sheriff's Office was forced to participate in the investigation and raids of dispensaries in the county. "Voluntary cooperation by the Sheriff's Department or other state agencies does not give rise to a Tenth Amendment claim," he wrote.

So now it looks like it is on to trial for Stacy. The judge did leave the door open a bit. He said he would decide later whether Stacy and his lawyer, Kasha Kastillo, could use the Obama-told-me-I-could argument, known as entrapment by estoppel, as a defense at trial.

Federal prosecutors are moving to head that off, filing a motion last Friday asking Moskowitz to ban that defense, as well as several others. Trial is set for April 26.

Stacy was one of two people charged federally in a sweep of dispensaries launched in the fall. He opened the Movement in Action dispensary four months or so before the raids occurred. One of the reasons he may have ended up in federal court is that investigators found a gun in the dispensary and, even under Obama guidelines relaxing prosecutions of dispensaries that comply with state law, that can lead to a federal charges being filed.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/weblogs/minute-orders-courts/2010/mar/16/judge-wont-dismiss-medical-marijuana-case-under-ob/

L. A. City Council ducks medical pot vote at wild meeting; harsh land-use limits anger crowd

By Christine Pelisek in City News
Wed., Dec. 16 2009 @ 3:49PM

No surprise: At a raucous meeting today, the Los Angeles City Council decided to hold off on voting on a controversial medical marijuana ordinance that would severely reduce the 545 pot shops in Los Angeles.
marijuana-leaf.jpg

The postponement came after the city's Planning Department presented hurriedly created maps showing that only five of 137 pot shops envisioned under a City Council cap could remain at their current locations if the city adopts a buffer zone to keep them at least 500 feet from schools, youth centers, libraries, religious institutions and residential properties. The remaining 118 would most likely have to relocate, many to industrial zones.

The findings caused a stir among council members and pro-medical marijuana advocates who booed many of the details presented by city planner Alan Bell. Here's the amazing part:

This was the first time, five years after the council decided it needed to adopt local regulations for selling medical weed, that the City Council has ever seen a zoning map showing where pot shops would be located or be banned under a typical "buffer zone" approach used in many California cities.

Unlike San Diego, where a respected polling group conducted a detailed survey of city residents to learn what residents wanted to do about medical pot (San Diego residents strongly back medical weed, but only 23 percent want a pot dispensary within a mile of their homes), Los Angeles just recently began debating land-use and neighborhood impact.

San Francisco acted about one year ago, adopting a 1,000-foot buffer around its schools and has shut down roughly half of its 50 pot shops.

The hot-button issue, which has been bogged down in a gridlocked Los Angeles City Council committee for many years, gained steam in the last few weeks after the council voted on December 8 to limit the number of pot shops to 137 -- those shops that opened up before the council rushed to adopt a 2007 pot outlet moratorium.

The council asked the Planning Department to draw up detailed maps that would show how close the pot shops would be to schools, youth centers, libraries, religious institutions and residential properties if buffer zones are adopted.

The Planning Department found that if pot shops were limited to a 500-foot buffer zone around sensitive uses, they could open in 31 percent of the city's commercial and industrial areas -- but only five percent of those areas would be commercial spots such as business districts. The rest would be industrially zoned.

If the city decides on a 1,000-foot buffer from sensitive uses, no pot shops would be able to open, said Bell.

If nothing else, the meeting showed which council members were in favor of pot shops and which members were not. Rosendahl, whose lover died of AIDS, said that if it wasn't for medical marijuana his lover would not have been able to eat. "We are treating this like a pariah. There are liquor stores all over the place. It should be legal...Putting it in back alleys and industrial areas is wrong."

Garcetti argued that he wanted to give "special consideration" for those pot shops who opened before the moratorium. "I don't want to have secondary effects where there are no clinics," he said.

But referring to the pro-marijuana advocates dominating the audience, Alarcon said the city had already "gone a long way to give [the medical marijuana advocates] what they want."

Alarcon was resoundingly booed by the crowd, but continued: "We don't have to do this...I don't want it 1,000 feet from my kid. Period."

Councilman Smith noted that pot shops have become crime magnets yet the City Council is being shown zoning maps instead of maps from the Los Angeles Police Department showing the crime hot spots. "My district won't stand for it," Smith said.

His comments caused a furor again among the rowdy pro-marijuana crowd, and security guards threatened to throw people out. "All your boos prove to me that you aren't good citizens," lamented Smith.

The next City Council hearing on the issue is set for January 13.

http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/city-news/medical-marijuana-los-angeles/

SAN DIEGO COUNTY BOARD TO ADOPT URGENCY ORDINANCE ENACTING A MORATORIUM

SAN DIEGO COUNTY BOARD TO ADOPT URGENCY ORDINANCE ENACTING A MORATORIUM

COME AND SPEAK YOUR MIND ON THE ISSUE!

AUGUST 5, 2009

According to the SD County Board Calendar Meeting is at 9:00 am

http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/bos/docs/calendar2009.pdf

Item 6 on the County Board Meeting Agenda: http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/cob/bosa/index.html

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 05, 2009

Board Of Supervisors North Chamber

1600 Pacific Highway, Room 310, San Diego, California

AGENDA ITEM 6. SUBJECT:

AN URGENCY ORDINANCE ENACTING A MORATORIUM ON THE ESTABLISHMENT OF MARIJUANA DISPENSARIES (DISTRICTS: ALL)

OVERVIEW:

On June 23, 2009 (20), the Board of Supervisors directed the Chief Administrative Officer to amend the Zoning Ordinance to prohibit illegal marijuana dispensaries from operating within the unincorporated area of the county. In response, staff is developing an ordinance which will prohibit marijuana dispensaries which do not qualify under provisions of State law permitting use of marijuana for medical purposes. This letter proposes development of regulations of those medical marijuana dispensaries not covered by the Board's June 23, 2009 referral.

This letter also proposes that the Board adopt an interim urgency moratorium on the establishment of marijuana dispensaries while the new regulations are developed. Existing County codes, including the Zoning Ordinance, do not specifically address or regulate the establishment, location or operation of marijuana dispensaries. The establishment of marijuana dispensaries before appropriate procedures and regulation are enacted has the potential to cause adverse impacts to surrounding development and risks to public heath, safety and welfare of the County’s residents and the general public. The interim urgency ordinance would allow County staff the time needed to study how marijuana dispensaries should be permitted and determine the appropriate regulations for such uses before they are presented to your Board for consideration.

San Diego County Board of Supervisors to Ban Dispensaries in San Diego

Tomorrow on June 23, 2009 the San Diego County Board of Supervisors during Tuesdays Board Meeting will be moving to "Prohibit Medical Marijuana Dispensaries in the Unincorporated Areas" of San Diego County.

Item 20 on the Agenda can be found on: http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/bos/agenda/index.doc

SUBJECT:

Prohibiting Medical Marijuana Dispensaries in the Unincorporated Area (DistrictS: ALL)

OVERVIEW:

Recently, the United States Supreme Court denied the County’s petition requesting the Court to consider the County’s lawsuit related to the conflict between federal and state law on the possession and use of marijuana for medical purposes. The sale and use of marijuana is illegal under Federal law for any purpose. However, marijuana use is allowed under State law when it is being used for certain medical purposes. Due to the Supreme Court’s denial of the petition, the County will be issuing medical marijuana ID cards beginning July 2009. The purpose of the State law relating to identification cards is to allow qualified patients to apply for and receive medical marijuana identification cards.

The for-profit sale of medical marijuana is illegal. In an effort to protect unincorporated neighborhoods from the serious negative impacts which medical marijuana dispensaries may cause, action is needed to make certain that the County's Zoning Ordinance is clear regarding their establishment. The proliferation of these dispensaries is a threat to public safety, public health, and community character. Today’s action will direct the Chief Administrative Officer to work with County Counsel to draft an ordinance for the Board’s approval prohibiting medical marijuana dispensaries from operating within the unincorporated area.

FISCAL IMPACT:

There is no fiscal impact associated with this action.

BUSINESS IMPACT STATEMENT:

N/A

RECOMMENDATION:

Chairwoman Jacob, Supervisor Horn, Sheriff Kolender, and District Attorney Dumanis

Direct the Chief Administrative Officer to work with County Counsel to draft an ordinance amendment to the County's Zoning Ordinance prohibiting illegal medical marijuana dispensaries from operating within the unincorporated area of the County.