L.A. COUNCIL AMENDS MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAW

City Officials Decide to Use a Lottery to Limit the Number of
Dispensaries to 100.

The Los Angeles City Council, fearing that it risked a return to the
days when medical marijuana dispensaries were opening at an
astonishing clip, amended its medical marijuana ordinance Friday to
alter key provisions that a judge declared unconstitutional last month.

In a significant change, the ordinance sets up a different process to
limit the number of dispensaries. A lottery will choose 100 from
among those dispensaries that can prove they were in existence on
Sept. 14, 2007, the date the city's moratorium on new stores took effect.

The changes were forced on the council by the judge's decision to
issue an injunction that barred the city from enforcing parts of the
ordinance. On Friday, the city filed notice that it intends to
appeal. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Anthony J. Mohr has
stayed his injunction, but it will take effect if the dispensaries
that asked for the ruling are able to post a bond.

Jane Usher, a special assistant city attorney, warned the council
that Mohr had made clear that without a new ordinance, his injunction
would leave the city with little power to shut down new dispensaries.
"He's put our feet to the fire," she said. "That is what he's done."

The council, with some members voting reluctantly, adopted the
revisions on a 12-0 vote, a threshold that could allow the ordinance
to become effective within 10 days. Attorneys for dispensaries that
sued the city said they expect to post the nearly $350,000 bond soon.

The council settled on 100 dispensaries based on how many it believes
the city's short-handed departments can handle. The original
ordinance would have allowed all existing dispensaries that
registered under the moratorium to apply to remain open.

An estimated 135 dispensaries followed the city's rules and are still
in business. Those operators have objected strenuously and
passionately to a lottery that could eliminate some of the most
law-abiding and best-run dispensaries.

"I understand that this is not fair to many of the operators who are
doing the right thing," said Councilman Ed Reyes, but he urged the
council to adopt the ordinance to head off another period of
lawlessness. "This lottery is what we can do now, as much as it hurts."

The council's decision came despite an appeal to slow down and write
a better ordinance from former talk-show host Montel Williams, a
multiple sclerosis patient who suffers from chronic pain and who has
become one of the nation's most prominent medical marijuana activists.

"Holding feet to the fire? Let me explain something to you. For the
last 10 years, from morning til night, 24 hours a day, 365 days a
year, I have absolute neuropathic pain through my feet, my shins, my
side and my face," he said, his voice quavering. "You walk in and out
of here every day and don't think about your feet. Mine I have to
think about every second of the day."

He told the council that its ordinance does nothing to ensure the
city is choosing the highest-quality operators, noting that the last
time he got marijuana in Los Angeles it was tainted with butane.
"You're not solving any problem for patients," Williams said.

Williams, who met Thursday with some council members, appeared to
have influenced several and they treated him with unusual deference.
The council voted to consider a plan to create an advisory panel to
devise a method to set up an additional 10 dispensaries that would be
subject to higher standards.

The amended ordinance is almost certain to draw more legal
challenges. Long Beach, which used a lottery to cut the number of its
dispensaries to no more than 23, has drawn eight lawsuits.

"We think the lottery is defensible," said Robert Shannon, the city
attorney. He said Long Beach has just started enforcement efforts
against losing dispensaries that have refused to shut down.

In Los Angeles, more dispensaries have begun to open, emboldened by
the injunction.

"We probably get reports of 10 new ones opening each week," Usher said.

She said that it takes between six months and two years to shut them
down, but that the amended ordinance could help.

"Clarity should lead us to much more success than we had in the
second half of last year while we were in litigation," she said.