Trouble Ahead for Medical Marijuana in California
Dec 15, 2009 Online Issue
California and Los Angeles have been pioneer sites for the expansion of the legal right to use marijuana. But local officials may now be at the forefront of curtailing some of that exuberance. If the Los Angeles city council has its way, the plethora of largely unregulated medical-marijuana facilities that have become a neighborhood blight in parts of the city may finally be brought under control. L.A. officials and medical-marijuana advocates estimate there may be as many as 1,000 such dispensaries. But in a preliminary vote on Tuesday, Dec. 8, the council indicated its intention to cap the number at just 70. (Watch a video on taxing marijuana in California.)
At the same time, the language of the medical-marijuana ordinance being debated is putting dispensaries under increased scrutiny. At the moment, the proposed ordinance would allow the facilities to accept monetary contributions for their services, a way of finessing the stipulation under state law that dispensaries remain essentially nonprofits. Currently all dispensaries stay in business by selling marijuana, a status that city attorney Carmen Trutanich and Los Angeles County district attorney Steve Cooley believe already violates the nonprofit requirement. According to their interpretation, recent court decisions have shown that marijuana collectives cannot sell the drug over the counter for a profit, although members can be reimbursed for the cost of growing it. “Whatever [the city council does] come up with, we will study very carefully, and if they’re proposing anything that is inconsistent with California state law, we will ignore their act and enforce the law as we’re sworn to do,” Cooley tells TIME.
The proliferation of dispensaries has become a nuisance in many parts of the city. Says Jose Huizar, a councilman for District 14, who spearheaded the proposed regulation: “People have been taking advantage of us for too long, and we want to strike a balance between providing access to those who truly need medical marijuana and neighborhood concerns.” Huizar’s constituents have complained about decreased quality of life and increased crime in the areas around the dispensaries. “Within a 2½-mile radius and for a population of 40,000 people, we have 13 dispensaries operating, which is just ridiculous,” says Michael Larsen, public-safety director of the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council, which is part of Huizar’s district. “It’s literally the wild, wild West.” (See pictures of America’s cannabis culture.)
Huizar says he came up with the idea of capping the number at 70 by allocating two dispensaries for each of the city’s 35 community planning areas — because he felt that was what the cash-strapped city could adequately regulate. The dispensaries that remain, he says, will be charged fees to help cover expenses. “I thought we need to start as restrictive as possible, get control of this out-of-control situation, and then we can start loosening up if we realize there’s a greater demand or adjustments we have to make to provide people with access,” Huizar says.
Some medical-marijuana advocates say placing an arbitrary cap on the number of dispensaries is a faulty way of bringing a problematic situation under control. “It’s the prerogative of local government if they want to establish regulations that limit the number of facilities in a city or county. We would prefer that the market, the patient demand, dictate the number of facilities that would exist, or that the quality of the operation did,” says Kris Hermes, spokesman for Americans for Safe Access, an advocacy group for prescription pot.
Patient registration in the state is voluntary, so it is impossible to get an exact count of how many patients utilize dispensaries. However, Hermes estimates that among the more than 300,000 patients statewide, tens of thousands reside in Los Angeles. “Now is the time to better evaluate what those caps mean. It may mean that demand is concentrated in a few spots in the city, and that can create its own set of problems and unintended consequences — perhaps lines out the door or lack of competition creating more of a monoculture. It’s important to keep that competition going so that we can supply affordable medicine to patients and give incentives to operators to do their very best in terms of providing services to patients.” (Watch a video about medical marijuana home delivery.)
Unfortunately, the lack of resolution on the issue continues. The final city-council vote on the measure was delayed until next week to consider the impact of a last-minute addition to a provision barring dispensaries from operating within a certain distance of sensitive-use areas. Previously, sensitive-use areas included schools, public parks and places of worship, but the council went on to include private residences in the list and increase the operating distance from 500 ft. to 1,000 ft. Some opponents say the provision is not viable and will force law-abiding dispensaries to either relocate to largely remote, industrial areas of the city or shut down altogether. “Council members have to come to their senses and recognize how dramatic this is,” says Paul Koretz, city councilman for District 5. If most dispensaries are zoned out of existence, there may be nothing left to adjust if and when L.A. revisits the issue.
SOURCE: TIME.COM
December 18th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
I have a degenerative spinal condition, among other ailments, and I suffer severe, chronic pain to the point that my Pain Management Doctor prescribes me morphine and Norco daily. It took a lot of suffering before I finally broke down enough to start taking the morphine because I’m only in my mid forties, and when the doctors told me that I needed to start a lifelong regimen with this drug, I quickly realized that a lot of things needed to be taken into consideration.
Things like the fact that in a situation where I would need the help of an ambulance crew, the strongest thing they would usually have on hand to give me when I could be in even worse pain would be morphine, and since I take that daily, it likely would not be very effective for relieving my suffering. And how about the next time I need surgery and will be faced with post-op pain?
The addiction factor alone scares the hell out of me, too… I mean, I didn’t grow up wishing that the doctors would make me into the basic equivalent of a “heroin junkie” one day, and it should be obvious what my fate will be when they have the technology to repair my spinal condition and it’s finally time to go off the legal “smack.” Can you say, “Horrible withdrawal symptoms”, at the very least?
I use medical marijuana to help alleviate some of the pain I’m in, and to help me cope with some of the symptoms of the Bipolar Disorder that came into my life along with all the other little gifts of puberty that we all know so well.
In our community garden, next to the tomatoes and other vegetables, you will find a few more plants growing naturally in the sun. When they are ripe my friends and I harvest their flowers and consume them just like we do with all of our garden’s gifts from nature.
I have found that if I simmer dried marijuana leaves and flowers in olive oil or butter for a few hours in the slow cooker, all the beneficial compounds of cannabis are drawn out into the oil, changing them no more than to add a mild, pleasant aroma and taste, and a light green tint to these foods.
I often rub the resulting cannabis olive oil on my arthritic knees when they hurt because it eases the pain better than any store bought remedy I know of.
I like to eat foods cooked with cannabis butter because they taste really good to me, and when cannabis compounds enter the human body naturally through the digestive system there are very little intoxicating effects, yet I get all the benefits of the pain and muscle spasm relief that the cannabis compounds can provide.
I also have found that I don’t build up a tolerance to the cannabis like I do the morphine and other man made drugs, so I substitute some additional use of this natural plant to slow down the addiction/tolerance factor of the morphine.
And, yes, I also smoke cannabis for pain relief and to relax my tired body sometimes, but I only do so in areas where cigarette smoking is allowed (as the medical marijuana laws say I must) and I make a conscious effort to see that nobody gets exposed to any of the second hand smoke.
I try to be a responsible citizen…
I follow all the laws that I am aware of except for federal medical marijuana laws (Oh yeah, President Obama said medical marijuana patients and providers are good to go on the Federal level, too, so long as we don’t break any other laws, so is that really…), and I try to better myself and my community whenever I get the opportunity. I strive do these things every day, just as I try to do all things in my life, with the intention of “doing no harm” to others while enjoying my life to its fullest.
I am Community Liaison for Americans for Safe Access Fresno Chapter, a community outreach organization that helps interested persons learn how medical marijuana issues relate to their particular situations. Our organization helps people who may need medical marijuana for a medical condition, their families, and their health care providers, to better understand how existing laws and social attitudes affect them in their current situation. We are also available as a resource for concerned citizens that want to know more about medical marijuana issues.
One of my biggest hopes is that the people that oppose medical marijuana will not cause even one sick and suffering person to be denied access to a natural medicine that has the potential to, if nothing else help them feel better for a little while.