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.
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