TOO MUCH ADO ABOUT MARIJUANA

The City Council Is Trying to Regulate Dispensaries Just the Way We
Control Bars.

There are about 120 Starbucks coffee outlets within the Los Angeles
city limits. According to the most reliable estimates, there are
somewhere between 900 and 1,000 medical marijuana dispensaries.

Mull over the implications of that comparison and you're on the way
to understanding why the City Council seems enmeshed in an endless
wrangle over how to regulate the number and sites of the nonprofit
cooperatives allowed by local ordinance to distribute cannabis to
individuals with doctors' prescriptions. So far, it's been a debate
whose observers could be forgiven for wondering whether they'd
entered the council through a looking glass. All that's missing is
the Hookah-smoking Caterpillar.

Last week, for example, the lawmakers -- who are scheduled to take
another cut at an ordinance today -- voted to cap the number of
dispensaries at 70, though the 186 establishments that registered
with the city after a poorly drafted 2007 "moratorium" on new
dispensaries was ruled illegal will be allowed to stay open. Got
that? The number is "capped" at 70, but 186 will be allowed to operate.

Today, the council again will take on the vexing question of whether
to increase the distance between dispensaries and schools, parks,
churches and private residences.

Councilman Jose Huizar told Time magazine this week that the council
came up with a cap of 70 because that translates into two
cooperatives for each of the city's community planning districts,
which should allow for increased oversight, even in these
cash-strapped times. As The Times previously has reported, "With no
ordinance in place to control their location, dispensaries have
clustered in some neighborhoods, such as Eagle Rock, Hollywood and
Woodland Hills, drawn by empty storefronts or by proximity to night life."

Maybe there's something to be said for medicine that gets sick people
back on their feet and out for a little night life. Perhaps that's
why marijuana advocates are concerned that if the council adopts a
requirement that dispensaries be located at least 1,000 feet from any
private residence, it will push them into the handful of industrial
spaces on the city's margins. Perhaps.

Meanwhile, county Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, who must have time on his
hands since his office ran out of violent felonies, devastating
financial frauds and political corruption to prosecute, has decided
to make "an issue" of the dispensaries. He says that if the council's
new ordinance diverges from the state statute, he'll "ignore their
act and enforce the law." His protege, City Atty. Carmen Trutanich,
is of one mind with the D.A. (Of course he is.)

Frankly, they'll both need night-vision goggles to find the bright
line in state law on this question. An official website maintained by
the state attorney general, for example, says that even though
federal authorities -- who flatly hold that cannabis has "no current
effective medical use" -- argue that California's medical marijuana
law contradicts the Controlled Substances Act, no such contradiction
exists. That's because "California did not 'legalize' marijuana, but
instead exercised the state's reserved powers to not punish certain
marijuana offenses under state law when a physician has recommended
its use to treat a serious medical condition." (In other contexts,
that's the sort of reasoning that made "Jesuitical" and "Pharisaical"
pejorative adjectives.)

No one is quite sure how many of those physician recommendations have
been made since 1996, when 55.6% of the state's voters approved
Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act, and authorized medical
marijuana prescriptions. At the moment, there are 300,000 patients
registered as part of a voluntary program created by Senate Bill 240
in 2003. Tens of thousands are Los Angeles County residents.

In 1996, medical marijuana was promoted as a substance that would
alleviate the suffering of people going through chemotherapy or
battling AIDS. Today, according to the federal Drug Enforcement
Administration, 40% of the prescriptions are for chronic pain, 22%
for AIDS-related conditions, 15% for "mood disorders" and 23% for
"other" illnesses. The source of the DEA's numbers? Why, the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

The real reason the City Council is having such a hellish time coming
to grips with this issue is that this is one of those areas where
social attitudes and thinking simply have moved beyond conventional
legal thinking or, for that matter, the permissible language of
politics. Medical marijuana was, from the start, a back door to
legalization, and now it's swung wide open. If we really believed
cannabis was a normative medical remedy, it would be sold in
pharmacies like everything else your doctor prescribes. Instead, the
council is trying to regulate it in just the way we control bars or
liquor stores or any other vendor of recreational intoxicants, while
paying lip service to the really rather limited medicinal necessities.

A recent Field Poll found that 60% of Los Angeles County voters and
56% statewide favor legalizing and taxing marijuana. As The Times
reported Tuesday, a proposition to do both those things already has
qualified for next year's ballot.

In the meantime, the council would be well advised to ignore Cooley
and Trutanich and adopt sensible regulations that treat the
dispensaries pretty much like bars -- allowing them to operate in
appropriate areas but not to become public nuisances.