The City Attorney’s Office
announced today it is warning all marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles
to close by Sept. 6, when a new ordinance goes into effect, or face
court action and a $2,500 fine for every day they remain open after the
deadline.
The office mailed letters to 1,046 suspected dispensary
locations and to 728 landlords, warning they are also liable if
dispensaries remain open beyond the deadline.
The City Council voted in July to ban storefront marijuana
dispensaries, citing a lack of clarity on how the city can legally
regulate the distribution of medical cannabis and the potential threat
of federal legal action against the city.
The council’s vote allows primary caregivers and patients to
grow and transport marijuana. Under the new ordinance, two or three
patients are allowed to collectively grow and share marijuana in homes
or apartments, but not storefronts.
The letter from Chief Deputy City Attorney William Carter
warns dispensaries that each day they remain open beyond that date is a
separate violation of the law and a misdemeanor subject to a $1,000 fine
and six months in jail.
In the letter, Carter recounted the city’s attempts to
regulate dispensaries in recent years and the dozens of lawsuits by
marijuana collectives that followed.
"The city spent nine months in settlement discussions with the
dispensary litigants and the court. We are not able to share the
content of those confidential discussions, but we can tell you that we did not achieve settlement," Carter wrote.
"The unresolved and continuing legal impasse has been accompanied
by a massive proliferation of unregulated dispensaries in the city,
leaving the city with only one clear legal option — to recognize
compassionate access, but prohibit medical marijuana businesses within
the city."
Medical marijuana supporters, led by Americans for Safe
Access, have been collecting signatures in an effort to put a referendum
on the March or June citywide election ballot to repeal the law. "The
tens of thousands of patients harmed by this vote will not take it
sitting down," Americans for Safe Access California Director Don Duncan
said last month. "We will campaign forcefully to overturn this poor
decision by the council."
