don duncan at about medical marijuana: LA city atty misrepresents CA atty general’s position on cannabis “sales” (2071)
LA City Attorney wrong about AG
by Don Duncan
November 25, 2009
The Los Angeles City Attorney’s office misrepresented the position of California Attorney General Jerry Brown today, implying that the state’s top law enforcement official said that all sales of cannabis are illegal. That never happened. On Saturday, KFI Radio in Los Angeles broadcast a previously recorded statement by the Attorney General Brown in which he says, “Unfortunately, in some communities, Los Angeles in particular, there’s a lot of exploitation and just getting into the drug business, the dope business.”
Pundits at the notoriously conservative radio station (home to Rush Limbaugh and anti-gay crusader “Dr. Laura” Schlesinger) then added their own spin to the Attorney General’s comments. The reporters opined “California’s Attorney General says he supports efforts by LA prosecutors to go after marijuana dispensaries selling pot to patients. Jerry Brown says marijuana’s illegal to sell, no matter what, but he says the state’s medical marijuana laws are very confusing about who is allowed to provide the drug to patients.”
Really? No recorded evidence supports that expansive interpretation of the Attorney General’s comments. In fact, a spokesman told Americans for Safe Access today that the report was inaccurate and Brown has not changed his position. That didn’t stop the Jane Usher from the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office from picking up where the ideologues at KFI left off, and taking it even further. She read the commentator’s expansive interpretation and the Attorney Generals comments back-to-back, never indicating to Councilmembers that she was mixing the two and muddying the waters.
This is just the latest dirty pool from entrenched staff at the City Attorney’s office, who seem bent on steering the Los Angeles City Council down their own narrow ideological path. They have consistently confused Primary Caregivers with patients’ collectives and ignored important case law like People v Urziceanu. The City Attorney’s staff has been wrong about regulations, wrong about case law, wrong about the infamous hardship provision, and wrong about extending the moratorium. It is not surprising they are wrong about Jerry Brown, too.
Perhaps City Councilmembers would do well to look to what the Attorney General said in his guidelines for medical cannabis published last year. Attorney General Brown wrote that “a properly organized and operated collective of cooperative that dispenses medical marijuana through a storefront may be lawful under California law,” provided the facility substantially complies with the guidelines.
Harsh criticism today by Councilmembers Reyes and Koretz indicate that the City Council is growing weary of bad legal advice. After lengthy debate, Councilmembers rejected the City Attorney’s ban on sales of cannabis for a second time – opting instead for alternative language proposed by Council President Garcetti.
You can read more about today’s City Council meeting in the LA Times.
[don duncan photo by steve llamb]