I imagine that just about everyone involved in the machinations to craft a city ordinance concerning the cultivation and distribution of medicinal marijuana by collectives feels like the process has been going on forever. And “forever” is not an inappropriate descriptor for the nearly seven-hour January 19 City Council meeting, the vast majority of which was spent on the subject.

And yet, when it was over, it was hard not to feel that suddenly we’re very close to having a medpot ordinance—and a good one—in place.

Right out of the gate 1st District Councilmember Robert Garcia noted his objection to language in the proposed ordinance allowing for collectives to be closed down for violating federal law—an obvious problem, since the federal government persists in categorizing marijuana as a Schedule I drug (i.e., illegal for all purposes), thus making all medpot collectives ipso facto violators of federal law. But City Attorney Robert Shannon quickly stated that there was no problem with removing the offending passages, and so that is that.

Not everything, of course, went so swimmingly. The most protracted and torturous discussion concerned two issues related to location: A) the zoning restrictions on where collectives will be allowed to set up shop; and B) whether all marijuana must be cultivated at the collectives themselves or even within city limits.

If there’s one councilmember who, despite his protests to the contrary, evinces a personal bias against the very idea of medpot collectives, that councilmember is the 4th District’s Patrick O’Donnell. While Garcia (et al.) expressed concerns that requiring collectives to be 1,500 feet from all high schools and 1,000 feet from all other schools is “excessive,” O’Donnell affirmed that it would suit him just fine if collectives were forced to be 2,500 feet or more¹ from all schools. And he did his damnedest to make it so, at times displaying an open peevishness toward his cohort. From the other side of the fence, Vice-Mayor Val Lerch rhetorically wondered how much distance the City mandated that bars, liquor stores, pornography shops, etc., be from schools. In the end, the Council acceded to the Long Beach Unified School District’s presumably well-intended but misguided request that there be a 1,500-foot buffer zone between high schools and collectives (misguided because it is not the distance from high schools to collectives that will keep marijuana out of the hands of students) but mandated only a 500-foot buffer zone between collectives and all other schools, excluding colleges. (Still to be worked out is what other types of locations may also get this 500-foot buffer zone.)

With that more or less settled, perhaps B (above) is the most knotty issue remaining to be resolved. The second draft of the ordinance called for all marijuana and marijuana edibles (etc.) to be cultivated on-site at the collectives. There is a host of reasons why this is not feasible, from the amount of space necessary to grow enough medicine (particularly with the growing of multiple strains—an essential aspect of any collective interested in providing the varying specific medicines its members may require) to collectives having on hand the necessary equipment to prepare edibles (etc.) to how hosting a large-scale grow-op on-site raises the likelihood that a collective would be a target for theft.

Moreover, not only does state law clearly allow individual patients and caregivers to cultivate marijuana at home, but, directly contrary to an assertion made by Deputy Police Chief Bill Blair, as California Attorney General Jerry Brown notes (at IV.B.5) in his August 2008 guidelines, “A dispensing collective or cooperative may credit its members for marijuana they provide to the collective, which it may then allocate to other members. (§11362.765(c).)”²

It seemed that these cavils (among others) were sufficient for the Council to will the abandonment of forcing all medicine to be cultivated on-site, but before that matter could be settled, the discussion moved to the question of whether said medicine must be cultivated within city limits. Assistant City Attorney Cristyl Meyers did everything short of making something up to give the Council the impression that collectives in a given city are disallowed by state law from including as members individuals living outside of the city; but as Shannon pointed out, the only pertinent legal requirement for collective membership is being a California resident—and thus marijuana distributed by a Long Beach collective legally can be grown beyond city limits.

What, then, is the problem? In the eyes of the police department and the City Attorney’s office, it’s that it is harder for the police to monitor the origins of marijuana grown outside city borders than it is marijuana grown within them (the importance of the origins being that state law is clear that all marijuana must be cultivated by collective members). But 5th District Councilmember Gerrie Schipske adroitly spoke to the enforcement problem on this front. Aside from the question of the usurpation of police resources, she noted to Blair (who stated his desire that police resources be expended monitoring marijuana cultivation itself), how could the police possibly determine where a given bit of marijuana was grown? Blair either intentionally put forth a falsehood or displayed gross overestimation of the L.B.P.D.’s laboratory resources and/or profound ignorance of horticulture when he rejoined (as vaguely as possible—“some method by regulatory inspection” were his exact words) that police have methods for determining the origins. Schipske clearly didn’t buy it (“I don’t think so,” she smirked) any more than did the audience, who laughed mockingly.

But puzzlingly, when it came time to vote on this issue, Schipske voted with the Lowenthal-DeLong-O’Donnell bloc first in favor of a motion to remove the on-site-cultivation requirement but limiting cultivation to Long Beach—and then, when they didn’t get their way due to a 4-4 deadlock (made possible by the absence of 6th District Councilmember Dee Andrews), against a motion merely removing the on-site-cultivation requirement³. (As of press time, Schipske had not responded to my requests for an explanation of her rationale for these votes.)

This is a shame for several reasons, among them the fact that both would-be requirements concerning where cultivation takes place would make things harder on the City, the police, and the collectives—all in the name of a provision that is largely unenforceable and very likely could find Long Beach on the losing end of multiple lawsuits.⁴

For me, the most surprising turn came near the end of the night, when Shannon, unprompted, referring to concerns voiced by an individual who spoke during the public-comment period, asked the Council for permission⁵ to reframe one section of the ordinance so that it is clear that only for-profit sales of marijuana that are prohibited, not all sales.

I was surprised because it had been my understanding that the City Attorney’s office was intransigent on this point. After all, L.A. County District Attorney Steve Cooley is on record as saying that even if the L.A. City Council allows for sales in that city’s ordinance, he will still be interested in busting collectives—even if properly set up as non-profit entities—that make said sales, preaching the gospel of the legal theory (which previously I have oh-so-cleverly called “the ‘no sales’ theory”) that all sales are illegal. Shannon and City Prosecutor Tom Reeves are known to have been in attendance at a summit Cooley held on this issue, and to this point it had seemed the two were acolytes.

Whatever the reason for Shannon’s apparent shift, it is a well-advised move. As I pointed out during my three minutes of public comment, state law mandates that all collectives obtain a Seller’s Permit—and how the hell could it be that collectives are required by law to obtain a Seller’s Permit if they are legally enjoined from selling anything?!

I also quoted a gem—unearthed for me by Shannon himself in a phone conversation we had two weeks earlier—hidden in plain sight in a January 6 Los Angeles Times article regarding the confusion surrounding the state’s medpot law as it pertains to sales:

Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), a co-author of the law, does not believe it needs to be rewritten. The problem, he insisted, is with how prosecutors in Southern California are interpreting it. "I can tell you the intent was not to prohibit dispensaries from engaging in sales of this medicine. In fact it was to clarify the allowance of it," he said.

Perhaps Shannon has been converted. Or perhaps his focus all along was the spirit and not the bastardized letter of the law—which indeed disallows for-profit sales (and will continue to do so until California wises up and passes something like AB 390 that legalizes marijuana across the board—thus unclogging our court and penal systems with the needless victimization of adults choosing to ingest a relatively benign substance with demonstrable medicinal and therapeutic value, freeing up our police to more completely focus on important issues such as truly protecting and serving our citizenry from violence and the like, and allowing a revenue stream of hundreds of millions of tax dollars to flow into our coffers and be used for such necessaries as upgrading our school system). “What we were trying to say,” Shannon explained, “is that no for-profit sales shall be permitted. I would like to reframe [the section in question] to simply make it very clear that although sales are permitted, for-profit operation is not permitted.”

And so, here we are. The work is not finished, and there still hurdles to a good ordinance that must be overcome,⁶ while it is still possible to backslide on the progress just made. But we are on the verge of getting on the books an ordinance that is indeed good.⁷

But I’ll believe it when I see it.

Footnotes

¹In which case there would be almost literally no place for collectives in Long Beach.

²That Blair would make an assertion directly counter to state law highlights that misinformation is still at play within the police force.

³DeLong’s “no” vote on the latter motion seems particularly hypocritical considering that minutes earlier he stated, “I do support [. . .] allow[ing] [marijuana] to be cultivated off the property.”

⁴It’s worth mentioning that hours later 8th District Councilmember Rae Gabelich made a valiant attempt to attach a friendly amendment removing the on-site-cultivation requirement to an unrelated motion.

⁵Which he received

⁶Aside from examples mentioned above, another is the second draft’s prohibition of marijuana in concentrated form (e.g., tinctures). The exigency of allowing such a delivery system is obvious. Imagine, for example, a seriously-ill patient who both has difficulty with solid food and is averse to smoking. A tincture can be dissolved into any liquid and drunk; a spray can deliver the medicine sublingually; etc.

⁷And certainly superior to the poor one that Los Angeles is about to adopt.

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