SAN MARCOS WENDING ITS WAY THROUGH MEDICAL POT'S LEGAL THICKET

One dispensary of medical marijuana is enough for San Marcos, city
officials say. We'd say it's one too many. And under an ordinance the
City Council is considering, San Marcos will have no dispensaries if
and when the existing one is shuttered.

And it may be.

On its application for a city business license for its branch in San
Marcos, San Diego-based Legal Ease Inc. put as the nature of its
business "educating and assisting compliance for persons who qualify
under Health and Safety Code Section 11362.5 (nutrition products -
retail)." An attorney might have recognized the subject of that code
section: medicinal marijuana. And a business concerned about its
official reception might have counted on non-lawyer clerks'
acceptance of "nutritional products," however misleading it is.

City officials, then, were unaware of the existence of the Legal Ease
dispensary - until apprised by the county sheriff and the federal
Drug Enforcement Agency of their concerns about its operation and tis
location: in a strip mall across the street from Alvin Dunn Elementary School.

In December the San Marcos storefront was among more than a dozen
dispensaries in the county raided by law enforcement after they sold
marijuana to undercover agents who had no valid written or oral
recommendation for its use from a doctor. Even under lax California
law, that is a violation.

Whether dispensaries themselves - as opposed to "primary caregivers"
of qualified patients - are legal is an unsettled question. State
statutes implementing Proposition 215, authorizing the possession of
marijuana for medical purposes and approved by 56 percent of those
voting, don't directly address whether commercial establishments that
dispense medical marijuana can exist, or locate near schools, or
retail their product for profit. And rulings of state and federal
courts have been mixed.

San Marcos, then, is wending its own way through this legal thicket.
The ordinance on its way to the council's approval bans all medical
marijuana dispensaries in the city - except this one. As long as it
is operating lawfully, it may remain open until it ceases to exist,
for whatever reason. When it closes, no dispensary may replace it.

As the only known medical marijuana dispensary in North County, Legal
Ease is on notice. So are its customers. So are neighboring cities,
which might want to check their business license applications. And
not least, the state Legislature is again on notice that fuzzy,
inadequate state law needs fixing.