REGULATING REEFER

As the City Works to Control the Number of Medical Marijuana
Dispensaries, More and More Patients Are Signing Up

When a working group of city officials and medical marijuana
advocates first met in February to decide how Los Angeles should
regulate its medical marijuana market, they were surprised to learn
that nobody could say how many dispensaries are in the city. No one
was keeping track.

Within the next few weeks, the L.A. City Council is expected to
unanimously pass a moratorium on new medical marijuana dispensaries,
the first step in an effort to regulate the city's rapidly expanding
medical marijuana market. Since November 2005, the number of
dispensaries has grown from four to somewhere between 100 and 200
today. Medical marijuana advocates and dispensary operators support
the moratorium, because it will allow the city to cap the market
until well developed regulations are in place, without disrupting
supplies to patients.

Councilman Dennis Zine, who introduced the idea of the moratorium
last September, also suggested creating the working group to study
and develop regulations for medical marijuana dispensaries. This
group consists of officials from the city attorney's office; members
of the building and safety, planning, and police departments; and
representatives from the councilmembers' staff as well as from
Americans for Safe Access, a national medical marijuana advocacy group.

The moratorium, which would go into effect immediately, calls for a
yearlong ban on new dispensaries, with the option of extending it
twice for six months at a time. During this period, the working group
would meet once a month to develop the regulations.

"This is going to be the most complicated and arduous regulations
process we've seen yet," says Chris Fusco, L.A. County field
coordinator for Americans for Safe Access. He anticipates that it
will take two years to develop the rules, as the process will involve
several different departments. Regulations will spell out zoning
laws, operating requirements such as permitted opening hours,
security issues such as security guards and cameras, and limits on
how much medical marijuana a patient can acquire at each visit.

Existing medical cannabis collectives with the basic documentation
that any dispensary would already have obtained will have 60 days
from the moratorium's passage to register with the city so they can
stay open during the moratorium, according to Fusco.

More than 10 years ago, California voters passed Proposition 215,
also known as the Compassionate Use Act, giving patients and
caregivers the right to possess and cultivate cannabis for medical
purposes. State Senate Bill 420, passed in 2003, clarified the
amounts that are legal to possess, while also giving members of
medical marijuana collectives the right to grow and supply to other
members in return for compensation.

West Hollywood is among the few cities that have a medical marijuana
ordinance, which limits the number of dispensaries to four and allows
them only on a few major commercial streets.

"We didn't really see that much activity until the last couple of
years," said Michael Jenkins, city attorney for West Hollywood.
"We're mostly concerned about making sure that the dispensaries don't
have any adverse impacts in the surrounding neighborhoods."

That is a concern in Los Angeles, as well. In a November 2006 report
to the Board of Police Commissioners, L.A. police Chief William
Bratton proposed a zoning restriction to prohibit dispensaries from
operating within 1,000 feet of schools and parks. That proposal has
come under debate, as Americans for Safe Access considers such a
limitation too restrictive and based on an arbitrary number.

"We want [regulations] to make sure that collectives are sufficiently
buffered from sensitive uses," Fusco says, "[and that dispensaries
are] compliant with their business licensing and taxes paperwork.
Things that any sensible business of this nature would comply with."

Los Angeles County has implemented a voluntary medical marijuana
identification card program - mandated by Prop. 215 but slow to catch
on in the state. (Less than half of California's 58 counties have
such a program.) Issued to eligible patients by the county department
of public health, the cards are good for a year and cost $166, with a
50 percent discount for Medicare patients.

"When we began this process and were estimating how much we needed to
charge [for a card] to cover our costs, we estimated that we would
have 3,000 cardholders in Los Angeles County," says John Schunhoff,
chief deputy director of the county Department of Public Health. "But
we don't know if that is a small number or a very large number."

Patients must make an appointment to apply for a card in person, and,
since the program's inception on June 1, the department has only
received about 130 application requests, according to Schunhoff.

"For most people, the cost of the card alone is going to be far more
than their doctor's visit, on top of the cost for medication," says
Fusco, who nevertheless recommends that patients get one. "This card
will finally give limited immunity to bona fide and qualified
patients in Los Angeles County."

Since implementing a patient identification card program in 2005, as
called for by SB 420, the state has issued about 13,100 cards,
according to Lea Brooks, spokesperson for the California Department
of Health. The program has been mired in financial hardships and
nearly went bankrupt after its first year because of low demand,
according to Fusco.

Initially, the card program was only being implemented in progressive
areas like Mendocino County, where the demand for cards was low
because patients did not need them, he says.

"Where we really needed the cards were in the populous conservative
counties down south," Fusco says, referring to counties like Los
Angeles, San Diego, and Riverside.

Americans for Safe Access estimates that about a third of the state's
300,000 medical marijuana patients live in L.A. County. Another
estimate suggests the number of state patients to be between 150,000
and 350,000 and the California market to be up to $2 billion per
year, according to a 2006 report by Oakland medical marijuana
advocates Dale Gieringer and Richard Lee, which made a case for
taxing the cash crop.

The California Board of Equalization determined in April that medical
marijuana dispensaries were not exempt from taxation and sent out an
open letter requiring dispensaries to obtain a seller's permit and
register with the board to pay sales tax, or face interest on taxes
due and penalties.

The supply sources for the L.A. medical marijuana market remain
largely unmapped, although some suggest that the nearly two dozen
recent raids on suburban growing houses in the area point to an
increase in local marijuana cultivation, possibly to supply the
increasing medical marijuana market. But the city of L.A. has no
plans to get involved with quality control and safety regulations of
the drug itself that responsibility is entirely upon the
dispensaries. There are potential health risks associated with
smoking or ingesting moldy or pesticide-tainted marijuana.

"Any compliant collective very carefully screens any medicine before
they pass it on to patients," says Fusco, who notes that all sensible
dispensaries in the city effectively self-regulate.

The Greater Los Angeles Caregivers Alliance - the state's largest
self-monitoring group, consisting of 60 active local collectives
offers an unofficial license of approval to dispensaries that pass a
series of inspections. The alliance meets monthly and has thus far
inspected and accredited 11 dispensaries, with 20 more currently
being considered.

"We see self-regulation as an absolutely necessary part in this
process [because] the government just moves so slowly, and somebody
needs to do something about these collectives," Fusco says.