Pubdate: Wed, 23 Sep 2009
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Page: A5
Copyright: 2009 Los Angeles Times
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/bc7El3Yo
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: John Hoeffel
Cited: Los Angeles City Council 
http://lacity.org/lacity/YourGovernment/CityCouncil/index.htm
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/dispensaries
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Marijuana - Medicinal)

POT DISPENSARIES SUE L.A. OVER MORATORIUM

Medical Marijuana Collectives' Suit Comes As the City Struggles to 
Write a New Ordinance.

A newly formed association of Los Angeles medical marijuana 
collectives has challenged the city's efforts to control 
dispensaries, claiming in a lawsuit that the 2-year-old moratorium is 
unconstitutionally vague and that the City Council violated state law 
when it extended the ban until mid-March.

The lawsuit, filed late Monday, is the first to take aim at the 
city's attempts to halt the explosive growth in dispensaries. It 
comes as the City Council's Planning Committee continued Tuesday to 
struggle with a permanent ordinance to replace the moratorium.

Representatives from the city attorney's office, the district 
attorney's office and the Police Department reiterated to the 
committee their contention that over-the-counter sales of medical 
marijuana are illegal under state law.

Most of the hundreds of dispensaries in Los Angeles currently sell 
marijuana that way.

At the same time, Councilman Dennis Zine and other council members 
repeated their insistence that any ordinance that did not allow for 
marijuana sales would be unworkable, as did many medical marijuana 
advocates at the committee hearing.

The lawsuit, filed by the Los Angeles Collective Assn. and the Green 
Oasis dispensary, charges that the moratorium is "unreasonable, 
discriminatory and overly broad."

It also accuses the City Council of failing to follow required 
procedures when it extended the ban. In addition, it claims that the 
council is precluded by state law from extending the moratorium 
beyond 24 months.

"They're basically operating without an ordinance," said Robert A. 
Kahn, an attorney who is representing the association and Green Oasis.

Councilman Ed Reyes, who is overseeing the drafting of an ordinance, 
was not surprised by the lawsuit. "It's another sword hanging over 
our head," he said. "Now, we have to move as diligently as possible."

But Reyes said an ordinance was still months away.

Jeri Burge with the city attorney's office declined to discuss the 
lawsuit's claims. "We're reviewing it," she said.

At a hearing Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Judge James C. 
Chalfant declined to issue a temporary restraining order that would 
have barred the city from enforcing the moratorium.

Dan Lutz, a co-owner of Green Oasis and president of the collective 
association, said he was motivated to file the lawsuit after the City 
Council voted to shut down his dispensary, which he and a partner 
opened in May.

Lutz, like hundreds of other dispensary owners in Los Angeles, had 
filed a request with the City Council for an exemption from the 
moratorium to be allowed to operate, but opened without permission.

The council failed to act on these requests until June, an oversight 
that prevented city officials from taking legal steps to close the 
dispensaries. The council has since denied every request that has 
come before it.

"We were being railroaded by kangaroo courts," Lutz said. "They were 
just denying them out of hand Obviously their intent was just to 
close everyone down." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake