MEDICAL POT ILLEGAL TO BUY, D.A. ARGUES

He and Other L.A. Legal Officials Say State Law Allows Collectives to
Grow and Distribute - but Not Sell or Buy - Medical Marijuana.

At hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles, cash is
changing hands, typically about $45 for an eighth of an ounce.

The dispensary owners call it a donation because state law requires
their stores to operate as nonprofit collectives. But their critics
- -- police, the district attorney and the newly elected city attorney
- -- insist that it's a sale and that marijuana sales remain illegal
under state law.

The debate turns largely on the interpretation of one sentence in the
law, but it touches on one of the biggest concerns about dispensaries
in Los Angeles: that the rapid proliferation of stores is being
driven by people who are hoping to profit from the so-called Green
Rush and who are buying rather than growing much of their cannabis.

"The people who are simply trying to make a profit are the ones
messing it up for those people that need it and those legitimate
distributors who are trying to help people," said L.A. City
Councilman Dennis Zine.

The issue boiled over at two recent meetings of the City Council
planning committee, which has struggled for two years to write an
ordinance to control medical marijuana.

On Tuesday, the committee kicked an unfinished draft over to the
Public Safety Committee without resolving some of the thorniest
issues, including whether to prohibit sales.

"We punted," Zine said.

The City Council's drawn-out deliberations could be a civics lesson
on unintended consequences. The council adopted a moratorium on new
dispensaries in 2007, but failed to ensure it was enforced.

It wasn't, and in the last two years the 186 dispensaries allowed to
stay open during the ban have been joined by hundreds of others.

That has irked law enforcement officials who argue that many, if not
most, of the dispensaries operate as nonprofit collectives in name
only. Next week, police officers and prosecutors from around the
county plan to meet for a training lunch to discuss "the eradication
of medical marijuana dispensaries."

L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley and City Atty. Carmen Trutanich
have decided that, based on a state Supreme Court decision issued
last year, the way most dispensaries in California distribute
marijuana violates state law. Neither was available to comment Wednesday.

The city's high-profile drive to gain control over dispensaries is
moving slowly.

Most dispensaries requested an exemption from the moratorium and
opened without approval while their cases were pending. Three months
ago Councilman Ed Reyes, chairman of the planning committee, began
the process of considering those requests and the council hasn't
approved any so far.

City officials said 82 requests have been denied. Of those
dispensaries, 51 either never opened or have shut down, and 31 are
defying orders to close. The city attorney has not decided whether to
pursue fines or jail time for violations.

The council's Sisyphean task was underscored by an exemption request
it considered Tuesday.

It came from Kedrin Rhodes, who opened King Collective Caregivers in
Leimert Park just five weeks ago, almost two months after Reyes
launched his campaign.

Rhodes, a retired probation officer whose mother-in-law died of
cancer, opened her store on a block that police and neighbors say is
traversed daily by middle school students.

Listening to Rhodes, who responded to questions respectfully,
councilmembers appeared dumbfounded.

"Did someone tell you you had the right to open?" Councilman Jose Huizar asked.

"Yes, my attorney," she said, explaining that her lawyer said the
city's contention that an exemption request does not give a
dispensary permission to open was "just opinion."

Despite skirting controversial issues, the planning committee did
make progress on a draft ordinance.

The proposal would require dispensaries to be at least 1,000 feet
from schools, parks, libraries, religious institutions, child-care
facilities, youth centers, hospitals, drug rehab centers and other
collectives. That restriction could make it extremely difficult to
find acceptable locations; city officials are still drawing maps to
see whether it would work.

The ordinance also restricts operating hours to 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and
requires that membership, cash flow and inventory records be
available for inspection without a search warrant or court order.

But the key issue -- how the city can ensure that "greedy bastards,"
as Zine put it in a radio interview, are run out of business and only
nonprofit collectives are allowed -- was left for another day.

When Californians approved Proposition 215 in 1996, they decided
patients with a doctor's recommendation and their caregivers could
possess and grow pot for the patient's medical use. The initiative
said nothing about collectives.

In 2003, the Legislature adopted a bill that attempted to clarify the
initiative, allowing patients and caregivers to "associate within the
State of California in order collectively or cooperatively to
cultivate marijuana for medical purposes" and exempting them from
prosecution for selling, transporting and distributing pot.

The city attorney's office argues that these exemptions apply only to
the act of cultivating marijuana, and not to selling it.

Medical marijuana advocates say that's ludicrous, that the
Legislature meant to shield collectives from prosecution for selling,
transporting or distributing their crop. The three councilmembers who
have devoted the most study to the issue appear sympathetic to that view.

"Whether the sales happen over the counter, under a basket or
standing on their head, they're legal," said Don Duncan, California
director of Americans for Safe Access.

Dispensary owners argue that they are not engaging in
over-the-counter sales. "It's an incremental reimbursement for costs
that have been collectively incurred," said Michael Backes, who runs
Cornerstone Collective in Eagle Rock.

Duncan said he believed no dispensary in Los Angeles could stay in
business if such sales were barred. "There's really no other way to
do it," he said.

"This ordinance pretends that medical marijuana facilities are some
sort of idyllic Maoist commune and everyone simply shares in the
labor of producing the medicine."