A California Superior Court judge issued a temporary restraining order allowing a medical marijuana provider to stay open. The judge agreed with the cooperative’s lawyers that a local city ordinance that bans medical marijuana cooperative dispensaries if they have more than three members in Long Beach was superseded by California state law, which allows the legal sale of medical marijuana from cooperatives without restrictions on membership size.
The cooperative has asked the court to rule that the Long Beach ordinance is so restrictive that it would have the effect of putting cooperative dispensaries out of business in the city, and the judge’s order allows the cooperative to remain open as the court case proceeds.
Graham Berry, the attorney for the Eartheart medical marijuana dispensary argued that, “for most seriously ill patients, self growing…is not a realistic alternative. For most patients, collectives with a dispensary are the only option. In our opinion, even the limited exception of Long Beach and Los Angeles ordinances is, in effect, a total ban and not permitted by state law.”
Although other dispensaries in the area have decided to comply with the local ban, patients, caregivers and supporters are taking action to challenge the ordinance and raise awareness of the Long Beach ordinance and a similar restrictive ordinance in Los Angeles. Though dispensaries are unable to provide medicine for their patients, they have raised awareness about the restricting local ordinances and distributed voter registration cards.
Local activists proposed a ballot initiative that would legalize medical marijuana dispensaries, but were unable to get enough signatures to place the measure on the ballot. The group submitted 6800 signatures to the county, 1000 more than required to place the initiative on the ballot. The county, however, invalidated over 1100 of these signatures, disallowing the measure from being on this year’s ballot. Robert Martinez, president of the Orange County Cannabis Alliance is undeterred stating, “We have a list of people where we can actually go and get their signatures and do another ballot initiative…the people have spoken and they know what’s up; they want this.”