On Jan. 18, the Supreme Court of California issued an order granting review of the now infamous line of medical marijuana cases of Pack v. City of Long Beach, City of Riverside v. Inland Empire Patient’s Health and Wellness Ctr., Inc., Traudt v. City of Dana Point, and People v. G3 Holistic. Unless the Supreme Court decides otherwise, this means that medical marijuana advocates can rejoice because local jurisdictions and lower courts cannot use the logic of Pack or Riverside as a vehicle to scuttle the regulatory processes that assure safe access to California’s medical [...]
When California voters approved Proposition 215 in 1996, their intent was to provide compassionate care to patients by legalizing the use of marijuana to ease pain from illnesses such as cancer. Prop. 215 was never meant to give the green light to the hundreds of profit-making dispensaries that have cropped up in the years since to sell marijuana to people who don’t need it, the Long Beach Press-Telegram writes in an unsigned editorial. But intent and reality collided, and the result has been a muddled mess for the cities, such as Los Angeles and Long [...]
City Councilman Jose Huizar is asking his colleagues to ban medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles. It’s a great idea. Or rather, it would have been a great idea three or four years ago — before the city purported to regulate the storefront cannabis-selling shops. The idea would not be to ban dispensaries forever but to track court rulings, determine what regulations are and are not allowable, and then construct a smart and enforceable ordinance. But it’s too late for that now, this Los Angeles Times editorial concludes. L.A. city government took its seat on [...]
Proposition 215, passed by voters in 1996, leaves too many things open to interpretation and needs to be clarified by the Legislature. As the California Legislature gets back to work next week, there’s no more important duty than addressing the state’s budget crisis. A close second in terms of priorities should be medical marijuana, the Chico Enterprise-Record writes in an unsigned editorial. While the budget is job one, the Legislature can’t say it doesn’t have time for clearing up the medical marijuana confusion at the same time. After all, the Legislature last year had the [...]
Even if the city of Redding orders its many medical-marijuana “co-ops” to close their doors by the end of the month, and they comply, does anyone think fewer users will be buying marijuana under the protections of Proposition 215? That’s the question asked in this insightful Redding Record Searchlight editorial. Whether you sympathize with patients suffering severe health problems who find cannabis eases their pain or think that pot smokers are just scamming the system to avoid criminal prosecution, it’s hard to see the business going away. Not so long as state law grants near-total [...]
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? That ancient philosophical – or would it be biological? – question has a political counterpart in California, Dan Walters observes in his McClatchy Newspapers column. To wit: Did California’s Legislature become dysfunctional because voters adopted too many contradictory ballot measures, or were those ballot measures merely responding to the chronic inability or unwillingness of the Legislature to deal with substantial issues? Countless academic conferences, newspaper op-ed essays and even books have been devoted to answering, or attempting to answer, the question ever since ballot measures became the [...]
The federal government’s recent attacks on medical cannabis providers are a disgraceful waste of precious resources, writes Oakland cannabis attorney Robert Raich. Barack Obama himself said as a presidential candidate that “I’m not going to be using Justice Department resources to try and circumvent state laws on this issue.” His Administration, however, has repeatedly targeted medical cannabis providers through several agencies, with the most recent attacks coming from U.S. Attorneys in the form of letters to California landlords threatening criminal prosecution and property forfeiture if they continue to lease to dispensaries. This flood of intimidating [...]
It’s a good thing that some legislators are willing to take on California’s medical marijuana morass. Attorney General Kamala Harris just tossed it in their laps. It’s perhaps a safer course to stay out of the fray and issue a carefully crafted, completely inoffensive statement, as she did Thursday, that supports the “compassionate use” of medical marijuana for the ill, expresses concern about criminal enterprises exploiting the law and urges federal authorities to focus enforcement on significant traffickers. But for the state’s top law enforcement officer, that’s just not good enough, says this Sacramento Bee [...]
As the Obama administration escalates its threats to crack down on California’s medical marijuana dispensaries, two voices have been conspicuously silent: state Attorney General Kamala Harris and Gov. Jerry Brown, her predecessor. Is she going to vigorously defend the dispensaries if the feds attempt to shut them down?, this San Francisco Chronicle editorial asks. Does she agree with the U.S. attorneys that some of them are not only in violation of federal law but also are criminal enterprises that break even the state’s lax guidelines – and, if so, why hasn’t the state’s top prosecutor [...]
The traditionally conservative doctors attending the California Medical Association’s annual meeting Friday weren’t high on the state’s No. 1 cash crop when they called for the legalization and regulation of marijuana. They were simply acknowledging the obvious: Our current laws and the resulting war on drugs aren’t working. The consequences of pushing pot underground, CMA docs argue, are worse than the potential problems of legal pot shops. This bold pronouncement moves the legalization debate further into the mainstream, and that is where it belongs, this San Jose Mercury News editorial declares. The professionals who run [...]
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