LA QUINTA CITY COUNCIL BANS POT DISPENSARIES

The La Quinta City Council voted 5-0 Tuesday to ban medical marijuana
dispensaries, making La Quinta the second valley city after Palm
Desert to prohibit the dispensaries outright.

Most council members said they supported the rights of California's
medical marijuana users, but they voted for the ban to uphold federal
law. State law permits the seriously ill to acquire medical
marijuana, while federal law prohibits it.

Lanny Swerdlow, director of the Inland Empire-based Marijuana
Anti-Prohibition Project, called the council's actions "typical."

He presented the council with section 3.5 of the California
Constitution, which upholds state statutes above over federal law
unless directed by an appellate court.

But council officials were not convinced.

"Federal law supercedes state law, period," Councilman Stanley Sniff
said. "There's just no conflict. It is illegal, plain and simple."

City Attorney Kathy Jenson said state law doesn't require cities to
have the dispensaries.

She added that La Quinta opted to ban the dispensaries rather than
create a moratorium like other desert cities, because La Quinta
hadn't received any applications to operate a dispensary. She said
the ban would clearly set the city's policy.

"We are taking a proactive step," Jenson said. Several at the meeting
spoke out against the ban.

La Quinta resident Jim Camper used to own and operate the Organic
Solutions of the Desert dispensary in Desert Hot Springs before it
recently closed. Desert Hot Springs has a moratorium on
dispensaries.

He told the council many of his former 200 medical marijuana clients
- - most of them elderly - "call him constantly" asking what to do,
because "there's no place to go now."

Camper, also a medical marijuana patient, said his only alternative
without the drug would be morphine, which he said he will not use.

Kay Wolff, wife of La Quinta's first mayor, Fred Wolff, also spoke
against the ban, citing a friend who used medical marijuana to treat
pain.

The state's attorney general is drafting an opinion on whether
dispensaries are legal in California, and it's expected by summer's
end. Swerdlow wondered why the council would not first wait for that
opinion.

Councilwoman Terry Henderson said the ban could be reversed if
federal or state laws change in favor of medical marijuana usage.

"Our city is much too small to fight the fight for the state of
California," she said.