LA City Council to Extend Moratorium
| By Americans for Safe Access | Published March 3, 2009 |
Hello, LA-ASA. The Los Angeles City Council will vote to extend the Interim Control Ordinance (ICO) establishing a moratorium on new collectives or cooperatives at their meeting in Van Nuys on Friday, March 6.
This is the final six-month extension allowed, so this vote means the clock is ticking on the ICO. This is a great opportunity for LA-ASA members, ASA Ambassadors, and others to encourage the City Council to reject the City Attorney’s draft ordinance regulating collective cultivation, and insist on an ordinance based on the working group’s input. We also need to tell them to hurry. Six months is not a long time to introduce a bill, pass it through committee, and get it adopted by the full City Council.
Please come early to complete a public speaker’s card for agenda item number 31. Your comments will be limited to 3 minutes. Business attire is desirable.
You can find the advocates report on the City Attorney’s ordinance online at http://www.safeaccessnow.org/punbb/viewtopic.php?pid=8252
| Date: |
Friday, March 6, 2009 |
| Time: | 10:00 AM |
| Address: | Van Nuys City Hall get directions |
Suggested talking points include:
1. The City Council and Planning and Land Use Management Committee should reject the City Attorney’s flawed ordinance, and instruct him to write a new version based on the existing ordinance in Los Angeles County and incorporating the input of the working group convened by the Planning Department in 2007.
2. The City Council and City Attorney must move quickly to adopt sensible regulations before the Interim Control Ordinance expires.
3. The California Attorney General published guidelines in August of last year that state that a storefront facility maintained by a legal patients’ collective to provide medicine to its own members may be legal. The City Attorney has ignored this position, and treats all storefronts as illegal.
4. Sensible regulations will allow for legal concentrates of cannabis and edible preparations, which are essential to patients who can not or will not smoke cannabis. City staff should enforce the terms of the ICO to prevent the proliferation of unregistered storefront collectives, which may cause undue alarm in some neighborhoods.
Visit the ASA Discussion Forums to comment on this topic -
http://www.safeaccessnow.org/punbb/viewtopic.php?id=2713
