City of L.A. Failed to Do Environmental Impact Report for Its Medical Marijuana Ordinance

Press Conference Thursday 12:30 on Steps of City Hall

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- James Shaw, director of the Union of Medical Marijuana Patients (UMMP), announced that today his organization filed a legal challenge in Superior Court to the City of Los Angeles ordinance regulating medical marijuana patient associations, based on the failure of the City to do an environmental impact report (EIR).

"The City Attorney pushed an ordinance through the City Council in January 2010 that was so full of contradictions and legally questionable rules that a judge placed a hold on its implementation, and it has since then had to be frequently amended in an effort to survive 57 lawsuits, which should be decided by the end of this month," Shaw noted. "No one, however, has recognized that the ordinance cannot be implemented at all until an EIR is prepared, as required by the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, on the impact of reducing the number of medical cannabis locations from 400 to 100 and then forcing most of the 100 to move."

"The City's argument that the CEQA only applies to development projects and not administrative changes is incorrect," said the UMMP's attorney, Jamie Hall of the Channel Law Group. "The City is compelled to consider the results of this dramatic change to the neighborhoods of the surviving patient associations or collectives, including a potential increase in traffic, parking, noise, air and water pollution, land use, utilities, and many other factors. The 75 percent reduction in available locations means, just to give one example, that cultivation has to be quadrupled at the 100 remaining collectives, which would need to use a lot more electricity and water and dispose of additional waste water and plant matter."

Shaw elaborated on the impact on patient services: "A three-quarters reduction in places where the estimated 75,000 to 100,000 patients using medical cannabis in L.A. can bring their physician recommendations means most will then have to travel a much longer way," said Shaw. "That alone would be a tremendous disruption of service, since many patient collectives have been functioning for over five years. But the ordinance requires something much more drastic: a buffer zone for each patient association of no less than 1000 feet from schools, libraries, parks, child care facilities, religious institutions, drug rehab centers, youth centers, residential zones, and other collectives. If you look at a map, that means almost all of them will have to move to distant industrial zones or rural areas, which would be a tremendous hardship on the most seriously ill."

The result would be an effective ban on access in most areas, which would seem to be the cynical goal the City Attorney intended if you look at the blatant misinterpretations of case law used to support the ordinance, said Shaw, as analyzed on the UMMP's web site www.UnionMMP.org.  However, a majority of the City Council has stated that it does want medical marijuana to be accessible to legitimate patients, as the majority of Californians voted in 1996 when the Compassionate Use Act passed. "Citizens should let their member of the City Council know that the ordinance should be amended to enable patients to have access to their medicine," Shaw said. "This would end the litigation that is expensive for the City and for the patient associations."

He pointed to the state standard that collectives be at least 600 feet away from just residential zones and schools, as a model for improving the ordinance to serve patients better. "This would allow more associations to remain based near their current members. There is actually no evidence that their location near any of the places listed in the current City ordinance causes a significant increase in crime and the white paper from the state police chiefs association that has been cited to support this extreme measure had no science to support its assertions. As L.A. Police Chief Charlie Beck testified before the City Council, banks are much more likely to be targets of robbery, but no one is insisting that banks move to industrial zones."  

Shaw also took issue with the common analogy to the need to limit liquor stores. "There are approximately 3,400 retailers selling liquor in the City, or 34 times the number of proposed medical marijuana locations. While liquor's harm is very well known, the City Attorney is trying to make a form of legitimate medication virtually inaccessible to patients."

He added: "No one who has studied the scientific evidence can dispute that cannabis has been shown effective in alleviating many medical problems, from offsetting nausea from chemotherapy and reducing depression to retarding the development of Alzheimer's disease and providing pain relief for those suffering from HIV/AIDS. If there are no benefits, why has the federal government taken out numerous patents for its medical application? Not accepting the health benefits of cannabis is like denying global warming." A convenient source of documentation for the evidence can be found at www.Wikipedia.org under "medical cannabis."

Shaw will elaborate on the medical cannabis community's objections to the current ordinance at a press conference to be held on Thursday, September 8, at 12:30 p.m. on the steps of City Hall at Spring St. and 1st Street.

The Union of Medical Marijuana Patients is a not-for-profit civil rights organization based in downtown Los Angeles, CA, which was founded in 2007. Through legal and political action in association with education and counseling on compliance with state law, the Union is devoted to defending and asserting the rights of medical cannabis patients. With a philosophy of personal growth and social responsibility, the Union supports patients, their member associations, and the cause of freedom of medical choice nationwide. For more information: 213/687-9981 or [email protected] (director James Shaw can also be reached at 310/709-1544 or media relations at 310/254-4051 or 843-801-3901).  

SOURCE Union of Medical Marijuana Patients