14 Hardships turned down

The Los Angeles City Council took the first steps Tuesday to close
existing medical marijuana clinics and prevent the opening of new
ones until a permanent law governing their use is adopted.

The actions were taken two years after the city passed a temporary
moratorium on new clinics that has proven ineffective. Hundreds of
operators have opened without getting full authorization from the
city by using a "hardship exemption" loophole.

On Tuesday, the city effectively began reviewing each of the hardship
exemption requests, denying all 14 they heard. Ultimately, all of the
clinics that opened with a hardship exemption must get approval from
the city to legitimately operate as a business.

Dozens of clinic operators and patients appeared at City Hall to
protest the council's move to eliminate the hardship exemption.

"The problem is in 2005 when we first adopted this interim control
ordinance, we had four clinics in the city," Councilman Dennis Zine
said. "Now we have more than 500. ... We are doing something wrong here."

Zine and other officials said they support the concept of Proposition
215, which allows the sale of medical marijuana.

But what concerns them is the number of facilities that have opened
without permission and have spread across the city.

"There are more medical marijuana clinics than there are Starbucks in
some parts of the city," Zine said.

The council voted to strike the hardship exemption from the interim
control ordinance that was written to try to limit the number of
facilities. Next week the council will consider final approval of
removing the exemption as well as extending the ICO for six months,
starting in September when the current provision expires and as a new
permanent law is drafted.

The council also began the laborious procedure of reviewing the
hardship exemption of the first 14 clinics that have opened -
rejecting each one either for violating the provisions of the ICO or
based on police reports of problems. Each clinic that has received a
hardship exemption will need to go before the City Council.

Richard Kerns, who said he is a medical-marijuana patient, told the
council he needed access to the clinics.

"I think what we need to do is bolster the position of the legal
clinics," Kern said. "The hardship (clinics) are not going to stop.
Register the patients and we can help you with the clinics."

City officials also heard from neighborhood council members who urged
the city to adopt tighter controls on the clinics.

Two officials said they will oppose every clinic and have concerns
about the widespread use of marijuana.

"I don't think the voters would have approved this if they knew it
would lead to clinics in almost every neighborhood," Councilman Greig
Smith said. "From what I've seen, this is nothing more than a
backroom effort to legalize marijuana."

Councilman Bernard Parks said he believes the bigger costs to society
are not being considered.

"We saw this after Prohibition was lifted," Parks said. "If you look
at the dollar value and what we get from alcohol, it is nowhere near
the social costs we have in dealing with it as a public health issue."

The hardship exemption was included in the ICO at the urging of the
City Attorney's Office to make the restrictions defensible in court.

However, several operators used it to open clinics without waiting
for approval from the city.

"What we saw were a lot of fly-by-night operators who were only
interested in a profit," Huizar said. "Those are the ones we want to
close down."

One of the problems the clinics had faced was raids by the federal
Drug Enforcement Administration. However, U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder has said the agency should focus its efforts on larger narcotic crimes.