Riverside County supervisors vote to sue dispensaries
In a behind-closed-doors meeting, the Riverside County Board of Supervisors voted last month to sue all medical cannabis dispensaries operating in unincorporated areas of the county unless they shut down, a county spokesman announced.
Riverside County is home to about 36 dispensaries, all operating in violation of a county ban. The board’s action also carried the threat of code-enforcement fines and other penalties should the dispensaries fail to close their doors. One supervisor said landlords renting to dispensary operators will be notified that their properties could be seized unless they evict the tenants.
The move came one month after the Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled that Proposition 215—the 1996 voter-approved law allowing marijuana use by qualified patients—does not prevent local governments from banning dispensaries. That ruling is under appeal, but currently, only the cities of Palm Springs and Yucca Valley have laws specifically allowing cannabis shops to operate in their borders.
San Diego dispensary ballot measure proposed
San Diego medical marijuana dispensaries would be taxed and allowed to operate in clearly defined zones and patients would be required to register with the city under a proposed ballot measure about to be unveiled by local advocacy groups.
Activists with Citizens for Patient Rights and the Patient Care Association plan to unveil the city ballot measure soon, according to a recent article in the San Diego Union-Tribune. If approved, it would regulate dispensaries much in the same way as those in Los Angeles would have been under that city’s now-defunct medical marijuana ordinance. Everything from security to hours of operation would be controlled, and dispensaries would be required to pay for at least some of the city’s costs incurred by enforcing the measure.
Members of the advocacy groups worked “in consultation” with local community organizations such as neighborhood councils and business stakeholders in drafting the ordinance, the Union-Tribune article stated.
San Diego’s government has had an on-again/off-again working relationship with its medical marijuana community over the past several years. The City Council had created an advisory board to help draft a sweeping dispensary ordinance, which it passed in April. The law was repealed three months later in a referendum by several pro-medical marijuana groups—including Citizens for Patient Rights.
They were upset by the ordinance’s zoning requirements and a provision that would have forced all San Diego dispensaries to shut down while seeking City Hall approval.
Coalition of “friends” seeks Pack decision appeal
Long Beach patients just got a lot more friends than they probably realized they had, as a far-ranging collection of cannabis activists, civil libertarians and city officials lent their voices to an effort to appeal the controversial “Pack decision.”
In October, the state Second District Court of Appeal ruled in Pack v. City of Long Beach that parts of Long Beach’s recently enacted medical marijuana ordinance was illegal under federal law. The published decision was immediately seized upon by federal officials as justification for their ongoing crackdown on dispensaries, and by local officials like Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar as a reason to dismantle their cities’ ordinances.
Now, a coalition including the ACLU, Americans for Safe Access, the Drug Policy Alliance and the city of Santa Cruz have filed an amicus curiae—or “friends of the court”—brief with the California Supreme Court, urging it take up an appeal of the Pack decision. The brief notes the decision contradicts three other state appellate court findings, including one by the Second District court itself, that California’s medical marijuana program doesn’t violate federal law.
Along with asking for the Supreme Court to hear the appeal, the brief asks that the Pack decision be “de-published,” meaning it could no longer be cited as precedent.
