Councilman Dennis Zine, a former LAPD officer, called upon the federal government to cease its attac

It was not what she wished for on her birthday. On January 17, 2007, the day JoAnna LaForce turned fifty-five, 120 heavily armed Drug Enforcement Administration agents wearing masks and bulletproof vests descended upon eleven Los Angeles-area medical-marijuana dispensaries. Assisted by the LAPD, the feds seized 5,000 pounds of pot and detained several dispensary proprietors in the largest single-day law-enforcement operation aimed at medical-marijuana clubs in California to date.
They raided and pillaged, recalled LaForce, cofounder and director of the Farmacy, an innovative West Hollywood dispensary. We were not able to get credit renaissance hotel columbus ohio card service because of the nature of our business, so we had a lot of cash on hand. They took $250,000 worth of product and $60,000 in cash and wrote us a receipt for only $42,000.
The Farmacy, with it s Very Open neon window sign, was back in business two days later. We practice civil disobedience every time we open our doors, said LaForce, a confident, renaissance hotel columbus ohio even-tempered woman who prides herself on being the only registered pharmacist in America to manage a medical-marijuana dispensary. LaForce maintains that cannabis should be regulated as an herbal remedy, not as a pharmaceutical and certainly not as a controlled substance.
Before launching the Farmacy in November 2004, LaForce specialized in geriatric pharmacology and hospice care for dying patients. I saw the value of alternative medicine, particularly cannabis, in helping with appetite, pain management, and anxiety, she told The New Yorker . I found that I could use cannabis to decrease pain medication, which in turn made patients able to spend their last days talking to their friends, spouses, to share good times.
Upscale but modest, the Farmacy established branches in Venice and Westwood, in addition to West Hollywood. Each store offered a variety of Chinese medicaments, Ayurvedic remedies, and traditional North American healing herbs, as well as several dozen marijuana strains, renaissance hotel columbus ohio imparting a mélange of therapeutic aromas ( a riot of perfumes, as Rimbaud once said). The Farmacy s family-friendly atmosphere appealed to young professionals, stay-at-home moms, stiletto stoners, and senior citizens who learned about the nuances of indicas and sativas from helpful attendants behind renaissance hotel columbus ohio the counter. The Farmacy also produced its own array of cannabinated beverages, tinctures, sprays, and topicals. Some patients who never smoked pot came to get cannabis lotion for their arthritis -- lotion that did not make them feel high.
The Farmacy was at the forefront of a belated surge of dispensaries in Los Angeles. The film industry took notice renaissance hotel columbus ohio and Showtime developed a series using the emerging industry as a backdrop. Set in a fictional Los Angeles suburb, Weeds featured a sympathetic soccer mom who becomes a pot dealer out of necessity to support her family after her husband renaissance hotel columbus ohio s death. Cannabis was depicted as a harmless, ordinary part of everyday life in America. The show s banality and success renaissance hotel columbus ohio was one of many examples that underscored how far the serrated pot leaf had penetrated popular culture renaissance hotel columbus ohio -- in song lyrics, on T‑shirts, at hempfests and hip-hop concerts, on medical-marijuana and hydroponics billboards. Acceptance of the weed seemed to be growing throughout the land. In the court of public opinion, marijuana has been charged and been found relatively innocent, observed psychologist Dan Rose, director of a counseling center at Columbus State University in Georgia.
renaissance hotel columbus ohio In 2005, when Weeds debuted on prime-time cable TV, there were 4 medical marijuana dispensaries operating openly in Los Angeles. By 2007, 187 reefer retail outlets were operating in LA County, which was home to one third of California s 300,000 authorized medical-marijuana patients, according to estimates by Americans for Safe Access. Thanks to a pent-up demand and entrepreneurial energy, the number of storefront dispensaries in LA would quadruple by the end of the decade. Newsweek called Los Angeles the wild West of weed. No other city in California had seen such an explosion of medical-marijuana facilities. At least four local ad‑filled glossy magazines served a burgeoning weed-smoking clientele. Hundreds of medical-cannabis dispensaries and delivery services advertised on websites such as WeedMaps and WeedTracker. In Hollywood (dubbed Hollyweed by stoners), there were more pot clubs than Starbucks.
On July 6, 2007, the DEA sent threatening letters to more than one hundred landlords in Los Angeles whose buildings were being leased to medical-marijuana renaissance hotel columbus ohio dispensaries. renaissance hotel columbus ohio A spokeswoman for the DEA told the Los Angeles Times that the letters were meant to educate landlords that they could face federal renaissance hotel columbus ohio prosecution, the forfeiture renaissance hotel columbus ohio of their property, and up to twenty years in prison if they rented space to anyone engaged in selling a controlled substance. The DEA also sent menacing missives to property owners in Santa Barbara, renaissance hotel columbus ohio San Francisco, Marin, Alameda, and several other counties. Some landlords renaissance hotel columbus ohio capitulated. Many dispensaries kept lawyers on retainer. renaissance hotel columbus ohio When an attorney representing the Arts District Healing Center in LA argued that a landlord had no right to evict a medical-marijuana dispensary if the tenant had not broken renaissance hotel columbus ohio the terms of the lease, the judge agreed.
Medical-cannabis providers in the Golden State, meanwhile, braced themselves in anticipation of more federal attacks. On July 25, 2007, DEA agents in combat gear, flanked by LAPD officers, raided ten more pot clubs in the Los Angeles area, including the California Patients Group (CPG), which served, among others, more than a thousand patients over the age of fifty. Directed by Don Duncan, cofounder of Americans for Safe Access, the CPG had become a focal point of local activism, hosting meetings for patients and dispensary operators. Duncan viewed the DEA s latest heavy-handed maneuvers as paramilitary theater designed to send an intimidating renaissance hotel columbus ohio message rather than to enforce the law. The timing of the raids coincided renaissance hotel columbus ohio with a press conference by Los Angeles City Council members announcing a one-year moratorium to block new medical-marijuana storefronts from opening while officials fashioned a comprehensive ordinance to regulate the fledgling industry. The measure was widely seen by local dispensary operators as sanctioning already existing pot clubs.
The DEA was also intent on sending a message when it targeted medical-marijuana users and providers outside California renaissance hotel columbus ohio during the summer of 2007. In August, a multiagency drug task force composed of DEA and local law-enforcement officers raided the home of Leonard French, a forty-four-year-old paraplegic in Malaga, New Mexico, who had state approval to medicate with cannabis; the raid came shortly after New Mexico became renaissance hotel columbus ohio the twelfth U.S. state to legalize medical marijuana. A few weeks later, the DEA raided a medical-marijuana dispensary in Portland, Oregon. But California renaissance hotel columbus ohio continued to bear the brunt of Uncle Sam s anticannabis obsession.
The medical-marijuana business is not an endeavor for the risk-averse, said Michael Backes, founder of the Cornerstone Collective, renaissance hotel columbus ohio a state-of-the-art dispensary in Los Angeles. When it got out that there was going to be a moratorium, Backes explained, hundreds more clubs opened renaissance hotel columbus ohio so they could register before the moratorium started. And then the landlord letters hit, which meant that some clubs might be forced to move. So they put in a hardship exemption drafted by the city attorney s office with very vague language that appeared renaissance hotel columbus ohio to present a loophole. renaissance hotel columbus ohio The hardship exemption was widely exploited and before long nearly one thousand (mostly small) pot clubs had taken root in Los Angeles County, while city officials bickered over how to handle the situation.
Councilman Dennis Zine, a former LAPD officer, called upon the federal government to cease its attacks on medical-marijuana facilities. Wearing pink armbands to show their support for therapeutic cannabis, Zine and several like-minded city council members asked the LAPD to review its policy of cooperating with the DEA. But prohibitionists on the city council and in the city attorney s office opposed any regulations that would legitimize the distribution of medical marijuana. They denounced cannabis clubs as crime magnets without offering any statistics to back up this claim. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, hardly a medical-marijuana advocate, set the record straight renaissance hotel columbus ohio when he asserted that armed robbers were far more likely to target a bank than a cannabis dispensary.
Mired in reefer madness and legislative paralysis, a split LA City Council did nothing for several years. As a result, unlicensed dispensaries continued to operate near playgrounds, schools, and senior centers. An increasingly competitive marketplace led to gaudy promotional gimmicks, renaissance hotel columbus ohio such as scantily clad nurses on roller skates renaissance hotel columbus ohio and carnival barkers handing out invitations to a hash bar on Venice Beach. A handful of pot clubs in LA stayed open all night, barely maintaining renaissance hotel columbus ohio a medical pretense.
The Farmacy, Cornerstone, and fifty other high-caliber, community-oriented medical-cannabis providers formed the Greater Los Angeles Caregivers Alliance (GLACA). In the absence of sensible regulations from local officials, this trade association developed accreditation standards and other guidelines for organic-only med-pot stores. In 2010, when the city council finally got around to issuing a draconian ordinance that would have banned most medical-marijuana facilities, a Superior Court judge ruled it invalid.
Amid all the chaos in Los Angeles, support for medical marijuana grew. According to public opinion polls, three-quarters of LA residents favored regulating dispensaries rather than eliminating them. In November renaissance hotel columbus ohio 2010, 60 percent of the voters went for Measure M, a citywide ballot provision that imposed new taxes on the sale of marijuana at brick-and-mortar dispensaries. The measure levied a 5 percent sales tax on medical-cannabis transactions in the city.