Jan 19, 2013 | MMJ News
By Bob Egelko
At SFGate.com
The state Supreme Court has denied prosecutors’ request to review a ruling to allow large nonprofit dispensaries to sell medical marijuana, a case that could affect the federal government’s attempt to shut down the giant Harborside dispensary in Oakland.
Harborside Health Center is the nation’s largest medical marijuana supplier, with 108,000 patients. Local and state authorities have not objected to its operations, but U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag sued in July to seize its property in Oakland and a smaller site in San Jose.
Invoking the Obama administration’s policy of targeting dispensaries that violated state as well as federal drug laws, Haag said the larger the dispensary, “the greater the likelihood that there will be abuse of the state’s medical marijuana law.”
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Jan 9, 2013 | MMJ News
By RICHARD K. De ATLEY
At The PRESS ENTERPRISE
The California Supreme Court has set Feb. 5 as the date to hear arguments in a Riverside-generated case over whether local governments can ban medical marijuana dispensaries.
City of Riverside v Inland Empire Patient’s Health and Wellness Center came to the court from a November 2011 ruling from the Riverside-based Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division Two.
It upheld Riverside’s assertion that California’s Prop. 215 and laws regulating medical marijuana did not preempt the city from creating ordinances that banned storefront dispensaries, and the center appealed.
There have been rulings from other appellate court divisions on similar cases since then, with one Orange County division turning aside local bans on dispensaries — the opposite of the Riverside ruling.
Published appellate court rulings can be cited throughout the state and are the rule of law for a particular court’s division – in the case of the Fourth District’s Division Two, it’s Riverside, San Bernardino and Inyo counties. When appellate rulings clash, that makes an issue ripe for the state’s high court, which granted review for the Riverside case on Jan. 18, 2012.
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Jan 8, 2013 | MMJ News
by Matthai Kuruvila
at San Francisco Chronicle
A federal magistrate issued an order Monday declaring that Oakland and San Jose landlords could not stop a medical marijuana dispensary with locations in each city from selling cannabis.
Both landlords face federal seizure of their properties for renting to Harborside Health Center, the nation’s largest marijuana dispensary with 108,000 registered and certified patients. To mollify federal authorities, each landlord has gone to federal court to stop the dispensary from “any unlawful activity,” which, under federal law, includes selling cannabis.
Magistrate Maria-Elena James said neither landlord had the right to pursue such an action under federal law.
In addition, she questioned landlord arguments that their property values would be harmed by the sale of medical marijuana. Harborside started renting the Oakland property on Embarcadero Way in 2006 and the San Jose property on Ringwood Avenue in 2009.
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Jan 5, 2013 | MMJ News
Editorial by Los Angeles News Group
at Daily News Los Angeles
The fight over medical marijuana in California has taken another turn. A petition to permit about 100 dispensaries to operate in Los Angeles has received enough signatures to force the City Council to either adopt it or put it on the ballot. This does not necessarily mean a meaningful resolution is at hand.
In fact, this citywide measure only muddies what were already cloudy waters.
The medical-marijuana conundrum won’t be solved until California leaders create a statewide policy on how to make pot available for therapeutic use the way voters intended when they passed Proposition 215 in 1996.
As long as state legislators fail to act, we’ll still have a ragged patchwork of policies enacted by officials tugged in different directions by compassion for the sick, the need to stop illegal for-profit pot shops, conflicting court rulings, and hardline federal laws. An Assembly bill to create statewide regulations was withdrawn by its author in June over various conflicts. The new Legislature must get something done.
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Dec 26, 2012 | MMJ News
By Josh Richman
At Oakland Tribune
Many marijuana activists always thought California would be the first state to legalize the drug for recreational use, but their dreams faded in 2010 when the state’s voters rejected Proposition 19.
Yet the legalization measure’s poor timing, lackluster funding and vague regulatory plan offered vital lessons that allowed activists in Colorado and Washington state to succeed last month where California had failed. Now activists in the Golden State are, in turn, scrutinizing those states’ successful campaigns to prepare themselves for another California measure down the road.
“This isn’t over until we say it’s over, and we won’t say it’s over until we win,” said Dale Sky Jones, chairwoman of the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform.
Jones, executive chancellor of Oakland’s Oaksterdam University (a cannabis industry training school), said California’s next effort is already under way. Proposition 19’s backers hosted a summit meeting Dec. 7 at Oaksterdam with the people behind five other legalization measures that failed to make it onto the ballot in the past two years. The groups agreed to work together to avoid competing measures.
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Dec 23, 2012 | MMJ News
By Aaron Claverie
At North County Times
A lawsuit challenging the city of Temecula’s ban on medical marijuana operations is headed to the state’s Supreme Court.
The court announced last week that it is taking up the appeal of a ruling in the case that backed the city’s ability to block medical marijuana operations via zoning laws.
In the meantime, the operation that challenged the ban, Cooperative Patients’ Services, will not be allowed to distribute medical marijuana within the city’s borders, according to court documents.
According to City Attorney Peter Thorson, the court will postpone action on the Temecula case until it decides a case in the city of Riverside involving medical marijuana dispensaries.
“Based on the length of time it is taking the California Supreme Court to decide cases these days, we do not expect a ruling in the Riverside case until at least December 2013 and perhaps not until March 2014,” Thorson said in an email to The Californian.
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