STILL LOOKING FOR GUIDANCE ON POT DISPENSARIES

It's well past time for the courts to give California cities and
counties a definitive answer on the legality of medical-marijuana
dispensaries. Conflicting state and federal laws are sending
contradictory messages to law enforcement agencies,
medicinal-marijuana advocates and the communities they all call home.
Those laws are interpreted and enforced with degrees of vigilance
that can vary from city to city.

The administration of pot laws shouldn't differ by ZIP code.

The latest panel of judges to miss an opportunity to render a clear,
unambiguous message about the legality of marijuana dispensaries sits
on California's 4th District Court of Appeal. That state appellate
court released a mixed ruling Wednesday that did little to settle things.

The case, which involved the city of Anaheim's dispensary ban, failed
to provide the clear precedent that both sides had hoped would
definitively put the issue's many unresolved questions to rest.
Numerous cities and counties across the state, including Kern County
and at least 11 of Anaheim's Orange County neighbors, had been
waiting for the verdict. What they got was a pass-it-along decision.

The court concurred with medical-marijuana patients that a lower
court "erred" in declaring that federal law, which bans all uses of
marijuana, pre-empted state law that condones specific
medical-marijuana activities. But the court also declared that the
lower court "correctly concluded that plaintiffs failed to state a
cause of action" connected to the Unruh Act, which deals with
business establishments, not legislative decrees.

Where does that leave cities and counties that have, to this point,
assigned predominant weight to either state or federal law based on
local custom and politics? Exactly where they were before the ruling.

It's time for a federal court to provide more definitive guidance.
It's probably too much to ask a court to settle matters once and for
all. However, we'll take a decision that moves us in that direction.