VAGUE LAW STOKES MEDICAL POT DEBATE

The State's Wording Is Interpreted Differently by Marijuana Backers,
Foes. Lawmakers Seem Disinclined to Clarify.

Prosecutors in Los Angeles insist that collectives cannot sell
medical marijuana at their stores and can provide it only to members
who actively cultivate it together. Dispensary operators, on the
other hand, argue that it is absurd to expect them to run
Soviet-style collective farms and to rule out cash payments for pot.

When the Los Angeles City Council finishes its marijuana ordinance,
which may finally happen this month, it is likely to inflame this
increasingly contentious debate over how the drug can be distributed.

The conflict hinges on the state's 2003 medical marijuana law and
almost entirely on a single sentence.

"The law's screwed up in a lot of ways. There's big gaping holes,"
said Yamileth Bolanos, who runs PureLife Alternative Wellness Center
and is one of the city's most politically involved operators. "It's
very confusing for everyone, even the prosecution and law
enforcement. It's like the Bible, everybody reads it the way they want to."

No Legislative Relief

The confusion could be cleared up by the Legislature, but that body
has shown no desire to revisit the law. And the attorney general, who
issued guidelines on how to interpret the law, has not responded to
calls to update them to account for recent court rulings that have
added to the bewilderment.

Instead, the issue may be left to the courts to decide, which could
lead to years of costly criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits
before prosecutors and dispensaries have clear rules.

"What a shame that the courts have to give the clarity, when the
Legislature could do it a lot more quickly and actually think it
through," said San Diego County Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dumanis, who has
aggressively prosecuted dispensaries for selling pot. She also said
Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown "could write clearer guidelines to say exactly
what a collective can do and to outline the steps to comply with the law."

After watching the Los Angeles City Council struggle with the state
law, Councilman Jose Huizar and Eagle Rock neighborhood activist
Michael Larsen said they intend to press legislators to fix it. "I
just want it to be clearer so that we're not wasting a lot of energy
on something that is going to be struck down," Larsen said.

Once the city's ordinance is passed, Huizar said, he hopes the
council will ask lawmakers to eliminate the ambiguities. "It's a
moving target, so it would behoove the city of Los Angeles to be
active in this area."

The law, intended to fill in blanks left by the 1996 medical
marijuana initiative, has sown considerable confusion and is one of
the main reasons the City Council has struggled for many months to
write its ordinance.

The sentence in contention, section 11362.775 in the Health and
Safety Code, says that patients and their caregivers, "who associate
within the state of California in order collectively or cooperatively
to cultivate marijuana for medical purposes, shall not solely on the
basis of that fact be subject to state criminal sanctions." It lists
the actions from which they are protected, including charges of illegal sales.

To marijuana advocates, that means collectives can sell. To many law
enforcement officials, it means that collectives cannot be charged
with illegal sales when they grow it but that they are not allowed to sell it.

City in a Gray Area

The City Council, trying to accommodate City Atty. Carmen Trutanich
and Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, who contend that
sales are illegal, crafted what it called an "elegant" solution: to
allow "cash and in-kind contributions . . . in strict compliance with
state law."

But by pegging it to state law, the council did nothing to settle the
issue. Medical marijuana supporters say the City Council's language
allows collectives to sell marijuana, but Chief Deputy City Atty.
William W. Carter disagrees. "As I read the language, it would bar
sales," he said.

The adversaries also debate what it means to be a collective.
Prosecutors say it's not a collective if members can just sign up,
hand over cash and walk out with marijuana -- which is how most, if
not all, dispensaries operate. Medical marijuana advocates point out
that very sick people often cannot contribute more than money.

Nowhere does state law spell out what a collective is.

Last month, a San Diego County jury acquitted a dispensary operator
of felony charges, dismissing the prosecutor's argument that he was
not running a collective but was selling pot for profit. "We had no
definition of cooperative effort," Perry Wright, a juror, told
reporters. "It was not defined in the law that a cooperative effort
needs to be literally raking and hoeing the plants. And, because we
were on the fence about that, we had to find the defendant innocent."

On the same day, however, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge
James C. Chalfant released a draft order that would force an Eagle
Rock dispensary to stop selling marijuana, agreeing with Trutanich
that collectives can only grow it. "A storefront dispensary that
sells to its members, I believe, is beyond legislative intent," the
judge said in court.

Conflicting advice

In August 2008, Brown, the state's top legal official, issued
guidelines to clarify how medical marijuana can be distributed. He
noted that dispensaries "are not recognized under state law" but
expressed the opinion that "a properly organized and operated
collective or cooperative that dispenses medical marijuana through a
storefront may be lawful."

Since then, however, there have been several court decisions that
prosecutors insist reinforce their view that collectives are allowed
to grow marijuana but not to sell it.

Brown, who is planning to run for governor, has not responded to a
request for an interview on the issue, but his office released a
statement saying it "is in the process of updating its guidelines to
reflect recent developments in the law, but we are still waiting for
a few key court decisions to issue."

"I think the pressure is on him to do that," said David Berger, a
special assistant Los Angeles city attorney. "His opinion needs some revision."

The debate could be resolved if the Legislature revised the 2003 law.
But both sides believe the chances of that happening this year are
slim, especially with a budget crisis, a statewide election on the
horizon and a legalization measure likely to be on the November ballot.

Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), a co-author of the law, does not
believe it needs to be rewritten. The problem, he insisted, is with
how prosecutors in Southern California are interpreting it. "I can
tell you the intent was not to prohibit dispensaries from engaging in
sales of this medicine. In fact it was to clarify the allowance of
it," he said.

But the law's lead author, former Democratic Sen. John Vasconcellos,
said it was cautiously worded and could be made more explicit. "I
would probably write it much more boldly today because the public is
much more supportive."

Paul Koretz, a Los Angeles city councilman who was a co-author of the
law when he was in the Assembly, said he thinks the law should be
clarified. "Now we've seen the pitfalls," he said. "We clearly need
to come up with some things we think need to be in the state law and
find an author and have the city be a sponsor of legislation."

There is one lawmaker interested in marijuana legislation:
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano. The San Francisco Democrat is pushing a bill
to legalize pot. But he is also weighing whether to lead an effort to
redo the medical marijuana law.

He said he believes that Trutanich and Cooley are on "a political crusade."

"I saw 'Chinatown,' " he said. "It really smells that way to me."

But he worries about what will happen if the state waits for the
courts to decide the issue.

"It's going to be really rocky," he said, "until something definitive
comes down."