LAKE ELSINORE: CLOSED MEDICAL MARIJUANA OFFICE TO REOPEN

The owner of a shuttered medical marijuana collective in Lake Elsinore
says he will reopen the facility following an appeals court ruling
that temporarily prevents the city from enforcing ordinances that ban
such operations.

"You don't open something like that overnight," Carlos Stahl, who
operated R Side Medical in Lake Elsinore, said Tuesday. "We're working
on it,"

Stahl said he is talking with rental property owners in Lake Elsinore,
but no decision has been made on where the operation will be located.

A spokesman for Lake Elsinore did not return a call.

Earlier this month, the California Fourth District Court of Appeal in
Riverside put on hold a Riverside County Superior Court order that
allowed the city to enforce its ban on medical marijuana
collectives.

In the order, the justices said there is a question of whether a local
public entity such as a city may prohibit medical marijuana
dispensaries when they are permitted by state law and have not been
shown, as a matter of evidence, to constitute a nuisance.

The stay will remain in effect until the appeal is
resolved.

The order allows Stahl to reopen the collective, but states he must
comply with code and safety regulations.

"The bottom line is that they get to stay," said attorney Christopher
M. Glew, who represented Stahl in the appeal.

Stahl, though, is not ready to celebrate a victory.

"All this is, is a stay," Stahl said. "It's not like we won the
battle."

Stahl has operated a collective in at least three storefronts in Lake
Elsinore, the last on Casino Drive. At the last, sheriff's deputies
and Lake Elsinore code enforcement officials raided the operation and
seized marijuana, hashish and money and arrested three people.

Stahl has contended he is entitled under state law to run a collective
despite the ordinances that make them illegal in Lake Elsinore.

Stahl filed the lawsuit in Riverside County Superior Court in May 2010
asking a judge to declare as unlawful city ordinances that bar the
collectives and to issue an order barring the city from enforcing them.

A month later, a judge denied Stahl's request, and issued an order
upholding the city's right to ban the collectives.