The ordinance isn’t the first attempt to address the question of marijuana dispensaries, and that is the source of at least some of the quarrel that will play out in the courts. In 2007, the city passed an ordinance laying out the first rules about where and how these businesses could operate.
And now that a second ordinance has been passed limiting the total number to 100, the city wants only those dispensaries that were operating before a 2007 moratorium to be eligible for a lottery assigning the 100 permits.
From the Los Angeles Times:
The next round of the costly, drawn-out legal brawl over how to control medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles has begun with two new lawsuits challenging the city’s latest ordinance.
The lawsuits, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, follow scores of other suits that stymied the city’s fitful attempts to crack down on an unknown number of renegade dispensaries. The new ones could launch another series of judicial hearings and thwart the city’s bid to enforce its ordinance.
Some of the oldest medical marijuana collectives in Los Angeles sued on April 13 to overturn the ordinance, which will choose the dispensaries to be allowed in a lottery, a process the lawsuit mocks as “a euphemism for a municipal game of ‘Russian Roulette.'”
Read the full article here.