Setback for medical marijuana as California court upholds local ban

Some 200 California cities and towns ban medical marijuana dispensaries, creating regions where patients cannot purchase the drug legally. Advocates want the state to regulate the business.

By Dan Wood,?Staff writer / May 6, 2013

Medical marijuana patient Kevin Brown smells marijuana available at The Apothecarium Medical Cannabis Dispensary in San Francisco, December 2011. California cities and counties can ban medical marijuana dispensaries, the state's highest court ruled Monday in a unanimous opinion. The California Supreme Court said neither the state's voter-approved law legalizing medical marijuana nor a companion measure adopted by the Legislature prevent local governments from using their land use and zoning powers to prohibit storefront dispensaries.

Jeff Chiu / AP / File

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California?s Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that individual cities and towns can ban the medical marijuana dispensaries that have sprouted around the state, dealing a blow to advocates of broader legal access to the drug and invigorating calls for the Legislature to speed measures regulating the business.

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Because of the scores of jurisdictions across the state that have already banned the dispensaries, the ruling by the seven justices essentially leaves in place large contiguous tracts of territory where patients with a doctor?s prescription cannot purchase the drug legally.

Some medical marijuana advocates said the ruling made it likely that more cities and towns, angry that the regulatory burden falls on them and not the state, also would enact bans.

In the case before the court, a ban on such dispensaries was imposed by the city of Riverside in 2010. The plaintiff, the Inland Empire Patient's Health and Wellness Center, which was objecting to being shut down, sued the city on the grounds that the ban contravened the state law's objective of "ensuring access to marijuana for the seriously ill?who need it in a uniform manner throughout the State."

But in upholding Riverside?s ban, Supreme Court Justice Marvin Baxter wrote: "While some counties and cities might consider themselves well-suited to accommodating medical marijuana dispensaries, conditions in other communities might lead to the reasonable decision that such facilities within their borders, even if carefully sited, well managed, and closely monitored, would present unacceptable local risks and burdens.?

According to Americans for Safe Access, a Washington, D.C. organization that advocates making medical marijuana available to patients, an estimated 200 jurisdictions in California already have such bans on dispensaries, of which more than 1,000 were established in the wake of the 1996 Proposition 215 that made California the first state to legalize medical marijuana.

Kris Hermes, a spokesman for Americans for Safe Access, says the challenge for California lawmakers already examining legislation to regulate the business is to ensure a ?more equitable spread of availability of these dispensaries?to people so there are not huge pockets without access.? Currently, he adds, ?the entire Central Valley? has no such legal dispensary.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/R1dGxs7P9P4/Setback-for-medical-marijuana-as-California-court-upholds-local-ban

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