Via: Los Angeles Times
John Hoeffel
April 21, 2011
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.’”
The 21 dispensaries suing the city are among those the City Council let operate when it adopted a moratorium on new stores in 2007. The city’s first ordinance would have allowed them to stay open if they complied with restrictions on locations. But a judge ruled that key aspects of the law were unconstitutional, and the City Council passed a second ordinance that relies on a random drawing to select 100 dispensaries.
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