GONE TO POT

The City Council's Lackadaisical Approach to Medical Marijuana Has
Resulted in Clinics Sprouting Like, Well, Weeds.

This is Los Angeles, where laws that seem sensible on the first quick
reading turn out to be studded with exceptions or are enforced
sporadically. Consider billboards. The city's porous legal barriers
encourage rogue sign companies to ignore the law and then to sue when
they are challenged. They often win - because the laws were so
clumsily drafted or applied as to be deemed void by the courts.

As it is with billboards, so it threatens to become with medical
(ahem) marijuana and the city's attempt at a regulatory scheme to
accommodate Proposition 215, the "compassionate use" act that voters
adopted in 1996. The City Council called a moratorium on new clinics
and denied every request for "hardship" exemptions - yet it failed to
block many of those rejected applicants from opening anyway. Hundreds
of storefronts now sell the drug, adding to the impression that, in
Los Angeles, the initiative is a cover for virtual legalization.
Present your physician-approved card and you can buy the stuff to
treat a bad day at the office.

Let's be clear: Virtual legalization is not and should not be the
city's goal. There is a nationwide debate to be had over fully
legalizing marijuana, but neither Proposition 215 nor city regulation
of clinics is the proper vehicle for that discussion. The council
should be - and finally seems to be - working to allow legitimate
medical patients to treat their illnesses without turning the city
into a new Amsterdam.

City Atty. Carmen Trutanich is recommending a very cautious approach,
with outright sales banned in favor of patient cooperatives. That
comes as a jolt not just to recreational users but to patients who
finally have safe and convenient access to pain relief and treatment.
With the drug now so widely available, it would be hard to return to
the days of cannabis clubs.

But Trutanich also points out that the marijuana being sold all over
the city could (and he says in at least two test cases did) contain
dangerous levels of pesticides and other contaminants, and that
clinics may well get their stash from the same cartels that have
wreaked so much havoc - and violence - in Mexico. It may not be the
city's role to regulate the product or its importation, but what's
the value of "compassionate use" for medical purposes if the product
actually is poisonous and if clinics, rather than providing safety,
are supplied by criminals?

Even if his advice to disallow sales is too draconian, Trutanich
makes some valid points. It may be too late for Los Angeles to move
slowly on medical marijuana, because hundreds of clinics are now
operating. But it's not too late to move wisely, and with the safety
and health of patients and other residents at the top of the agenda.