Articles Posted in Riverside marijuana dispensaries

Medical marijuana dispensaries in Garden Grove were banned roughly three years ago, but the ban didn’t go as planned. With a number of lawsuits that began stacking up, officials worried that the city would not have the necessary funds available to pay any costs associated with the laws, including attorneys’ fees. One marijuana case paid out roughly $200,000 to the attorneys. Since the flood of these lawsuits, the city stopped pushing its ban. Beginning this past summer, the city required medical marijuana dispensaries to register with the city. Now there are roughly 60 shops in the city. City Manager Matt Fertal says that he thinks the city has more shops per capita than any other city in the state.

“Everybody is just so frustrated with this,” Fertal said.

Our Los Angeles medical marijuana attorneys understand the problems shop owners face when dealing with the government regulations on the medical marijuana industry. State law doesn’t specify how cities and counties should regulate the industry and federal government says it’s still illegal, not matter what. Fertal recognizes that many dispensaries won’t hesitate to sue cities for trying to regulate them. Garden Grove continues to search for a comprehensive regulating system to please everyone.

As the industry continues to grow, smaller cities are finding regulation to be too costly. Many smaller cities aren’t fortunate enough to have in-house legal departments and have to pay attorneys by the hour.

While there are no distinct numbers illustrating how many local governments have been involved in costly litigation over marijuana, many estimate that there have been at least 40. Some believe this number is much higher.

Many cities are undergoing serious budget crunches and simply don’t have the resources to battle these wealthy dispensaries. Medical marijuana activists have joined the fight, too, saying these needless regulations are harming deserving patients who rely on the treatment.

Officials who suppress the industry are going to become victims of litigation, it’s inevitable. There are activists in nearly every community throughout the state who are ready to fight back. These activists say they have the state on their side. Recent polls illustrate that a majority of Californians support medical marijuana.

Medical marijuana was approved for medicinal purposes in California back in 1996. This was passed in Proposition 215. Later in 2009, California’s legislature passed the Medical Marijuana Program Act (Senate Bill 420). The legality of the industry remains in the gray area though with so many different regulations across the state. In the beginning of President Barack Obama’s term, he promised to halt the crackdown on medical marijuana that followed state laws. That promise was short-lived.

“People should be entitled to know what the law is, and the law is not clear enough for people to know what it is,” said Joe Elford, of Americans for Safe Access.
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Last week, Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill that allows all local governments to regulate the locations of medical marijuana dispensaries in California. The bill, AB 1300, was first introduced by Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield (D-Woodland Hills). It was also supported by the Los Angeles city attorney, according to NBC.

This law aims to settle the issue; pot shops continue to sue local government over location regulations. Under this new law, cities throughout California will have the ability to file criminal or civil charges against shops that violate the new regulations.

Our Orange County medical marijuana attorneys will continue to fight these rules and regulations. A court ruling has already sided with patients and collectives on the issue of criminal charges — ruling patients and collectives should not face criminal prosecution for something that is legal under state law.

State and local governments continue to have a difficult time understanding the obligation to obey the state Constitution. The state’s marijuana law was passed by the voters. Our attorneys do not believe state or local government has the right to construct rules or regulations that infringe upon the voter-approved rights of patients. As is usual with state government, too many of the politicians have forgotten that they work for the voters.

The governor also received SB 847 to further regulate the medical marijuana industry. This bill aims to stop medical marijuana shops from opening up within 600 feet of homes and residential areas. Although this bill has yet to be signed, it’s another real threat to the livelihood of the industry. A number of residents in local residential areas rely on the convenient location of these shops to receive their prescribed medication. Limiting their operational areas will put dispensaries out of reach for many deserving patients.

“The new law will provide a framework for stability after years of struggling with a Wild West, lawless proliferation of dispensaries across California that sometimes constitute a public nuisance or worse,” Blumenfield said.

The governor has 12 days to decide on that SB 847, which was introduced by state Sen. Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana).

A number of our medical marijuana dispensaries believe that the new law will only lead to a repeat of historic regulations. Take Los Angeles for example. Back in 2010, the Los Angeles City Council and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa passed and signed an ordinance that required medical marijuana dispensaries to:

-Only provide medical marijuana patients that “participate in the collective cultivation of marijuana at or upon the location of that collective.”

-Keep their businesses at least 1,000 feet away from all schools, libraries, child care facilities, parks, religions institutions, substance abuse rehabilitation centers, youth center and any other medical marijuana collective.

-Close shops from 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 a.m.

-Operate as a not-for-profit establishment. The only compensation it would be allowed to collect would be to cover expenses for cultivating, growing and providing the products.

It was these requirements, along with a limit on the number of dispensaries, that lead to hundreds of closed shops in the city.

A number of dispensaries have been shut down since the new law was signed, but companies are fighting back. Five dispensaries have already been shut down in Westwood, California. More are expected to be forced to close up shop.

The bottom line is that medical marijuana is a lucrative industry and should be regulated as a legitimate business in the U.S. But unnecessary regulations that put these companies out of business are only violating owners and patient’s rights.
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The Los Angeles city attorney’s office recently obtained a court order to shut down operations at a medical marijuana dispensary in North Hollywood. Under the shutdown, the owner of the company was ordered to pay more than $35,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs earlier this week, according to the Studio City Patch.

During the eviction process, the owners of shop Starbudz Inc. were carried off the premises in the NoHo Arts District. Sheriff’s deputies cleared the area for the Los Angeles police to come in and seize the remaining property. The police officers confiscated 3.5 kilograms of marijuana, 37 plants and food items. Officers also took a 3-foot long iguana into custody.

Our Orange County medical marijuana attorneys would like to point out that this eviction action was the result of a number of alleged community complaints. No data has been released regarding these complaints. The city reportedly collected a significant amount of evidence through undercover marijuana purchases that were made at that location as well. The city also collected evidence after raiding the building through a search warrant executed by the Los Angeles Police Department.

Frank Mateljan of the city attorney’s office says that the city attorney’s notified the shop owners and the property owner back in January of “narcotics violations at the property.”

The shop neglected to file a Notice of Intent to Register under the city’s “temporary urgency” ordinance, a temporary law governing medical marijuana sales.

Back in March, the city attorney’s office filed an unlawful detainer action against the owners of this shop. The detainer was filed in an attempt to evict the shop and for the owners to forfeit the lease because the property owner had reportedly failed to take action to evict the shop.

A summary judgment was granted by the court in favor of the city back on June 17th. Through this judgment, the company owner was ordered by the court to pay $35,290 to the city for attorneys’ fees and costs. Two days later, the county Sheriff’s Department handed Starbudz and the property owner, Vineland Sunshine Properties, with a notice of lockout. The order was enforced and carried out that Wednesday.

Medical marijuana clinics in Hollywood are currently required to be staffed with the same type of expert medical doctors that you would find at any other healthcare practice. The only difference is that these health specialists deal specifically with evaluating patients who are suffering from symptoms that can be treated with the use of medical marijuana. Researchers have found that the drug is able to treat more than 100 different illnesses, diseases and chronic symptoms. All of these conditions have been approved by the state to be treated with the use of medical marijuana. If doctors believe that a patient can benefit from this treatment, they are then prescribed the drug and presented with a medical marijuana card.

According to the Medical Marijuana Program, there have been more than 55,000 medical marijuana cards issued in the state of California since 2004.

Alameda, Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Contra Costa, Del Norte, El Dorado, Fresno,
Glenn, Humboldt, Imperial, Inyo, Kern, Kings, Lake, Lassen, Los Angeles, Madera, Marin,
Mariposa, Mendocino, Merced, Modoc, Mono, Monterey, Napa, Nevada, Orange, Placer,
Plumas, Riverside, Sacramento, San Benito, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Francisco, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, Tehama, Trinity, Tulare, Tuolumne, Ventura, Yolo and Yuba counties currently participate in the program.
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Medical marijuana was legalized by California fifteen years ago. Still, to this day, lawmakers are trying to regulate and tax the billion-dollar industry as medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles and elsewhere throughout the state continue to fight for survival.

Recently, lawmakers made a number of attempts to regulate the locations of these pot shops. They banned them from being located with residential neighborhoods and school zones and gave local officials the authority to bust in and shut them down. Proposals to reduce the penalties for illegal pot cultivation and to protect medical marijuana users from workplace discrimination were also rejected, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Our Los Angeles medical marijuana attorneys understand that the government is using every bit of its energy to regulate and ultimately shut down this industry. They’re regulating the locations of these stores, throwing unjust taxes at them and violently raiding their shops for minor code violations. It seems we’ve reached the point of no return in the battle of medical marijuana against the government. It is only with the proper knowledge and a tactical approach that medical marijuana can prevail in this battle.

“You have medical marijuana dispensaries in residential areas where you have children exposed to secondhand smoke from pot smoking,” said Sen. Louis Correa (D-Santa Ana). He has proposed legislation, SB 847, that would ban dispensaries within 600 feet of homes and apartments. It recently passed the state Senate.

City leaders, law enforcement and lawmakers continue to justify these “necessary” crackdowns saying that they’re needed because of the hundreds of newly-opened medical marijuana dispensaries that turned on their open-sign with little to no oversight. These recent shop openings, officials believe, are a direct result of a moratorium that was imposed in 2007. Now, shops across the state are suing cities that step up their enforcement efforts saying that they have no right to regulate an activity that was approved by voters.

“As usual, legislators feel like they’ve gotta get tough,” said Dale Gieringer, state coordinator for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. “If there’s a problem, we have to pass more laws for people to break. It’s classic legislative syndrome.”

There are somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 dispensaries that are open for business across the state, according to Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana advocacy group.

Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield (D-Woodland Hills) isn’t too thrilled about these statistics as he was reported saying that there are now “more marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks.”

“The inadequacy of medical marijuana laws has created a Wild West lawlessness,” said Blumenfield.

Blumenfield recently proposed a bill, AB 1300, that would clarify the rights of a city to regulate dispensaries. It easily passed the Assembly and is waiting on an action in the Senate.

A separate bill, SB 676, that aims to allow farmers to grow industrial hemp, a non-psychoactive variety of marijuana was barely made it through. Senate. Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) proposed the law and had to reassure his lawmakers that the hemp was not a drug.

“Even with 80% of Californians supporting medical cannabis use, the Legislature traditionally has been very frightened by it, which is nonsensical to me,” Leno said.
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It’s no secret that cities are having a tough time regulating dispensaries, especially our medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles. It’s also no surprise that after a number of lawsuits challenging these city crackdowns, a new state law has turned up aiming to allow municipalities to put their foot down on these shops.

California’s AB 1300 that does just that, and the proposal recently passed the state Assembly. It was originally introduced by local Democratic Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield, according to LA Weekly. He says that the ambiguity over who has authority over these marijuana collectives has only led to higher crime and illegal sales.

Our Los Angeles medical marijuana attorneys recognize that this is the last thing we need in our area. If the last two years have been any indication of what is to come, our medical marijuana dispensaries have quite the fight against unnecessary and frivolous laws aimed at regulating the industry. Previous attempts at regulation clearly indicate that cities are incapable of passing rational, logical laws that don’t violate patient rights under the state’s medical marijuana law. The industry must continue to fight back in hopes of one day operating on a fair and level playing field.

This new bill says that your locality can adopt “local ordinances that regulate the location, operation, or establishment of a medical marijuana cooperative or collective …” Basically, it would give the cities power over location, hours, licensing, possession, cultivation, transportation, processing, or use of limited amounts of marijuana, as specified of collective operations. Ironically, these proposed regulations were one of the complaints opponents of Prop. 19 made last fall. They concluded that it would establish too much local control over cannabis.

In addition, it clearly states that cities have the right to put local shops out of business, which is nothing new for our shops here in Los Angeles as the city continues to go after dispensaries for “out-of-compliance” charges.

The new bill was approved 53-1 last week and will now go to the Senate. The dissenting vote came from San Francisco’s Tom Ammiano, a pro-pot advocate. He objected to the lack of the word “dispensary” in the language, which he said would further recognize the legitimacy of the storefronts.

This is a continuous battle with no end in sight. The industry is continually fighting to retain what little rights medical marijuana patients and dispensaries have left.

If you disagree with this law as much as our local medical marijuana shops do, you are urged speak out and change it. It’s important to remember that your chances of being heard are much better in your town than in the state capital. Oftentimes, it is our state governments that continue to run our shops out of town. We need to keep fighting for our rights before officials yank them away.
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