Los Angeles Receives more than 200 Medical Marijuana Dispensary Applications

The Los Angeles City Clerk’s Office is reviewing 231 applications from medical marijuana dispensaries that have applied to be part of a lottery to choose 100 the city will permit to operate, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The city clerk’s handling of the medical marijuana ordinance has been nearly as disastrous as council’s. Our Los Angeles medical marijuana defense lawyers expect lost paperwork, bad rejections and more or less arbitrary decisions to be commonplace. Our attorneys currently represent more than a dozen dispensaries and collectives in Los Angeles and the surrounding area. We recommend fighting for your rights. The judge has already rejected criminal penalties for dispensaries that remain open — while you may be subjected to a civil lawsuit, we see forced closure as the ultimate civil penalty anyway. Those dispensaries that are fighting for their rights are enjoying the best chances for success.

Displaying the attention to detail that always makes for a good clerk, the city clerk’s office initially announced 228 filings, then said it had accidentally left three off the list. It now estimates it could take 4 weeks to determine which applicants are “eligible.”

We would suggest saving the city a lot of time by deeming all of the applicants eligible under state law. The city has decided to conduct the drawing because its ill-conceived ordinance, which went into effect last summer, has been so disastrous it would have forced the closure of nearly all of the city’s more than 400 dispensaries.

On March 9, the city released a list of 141 dispensaries ordered to close.

The city is now attempting to shut them down under a new ordinance — a judge gutted much of the previous ordinance. The new interim emergency ordinance is likely to fair no better but the city is moving before there has been enough time for legal challenges.

The CANNABIS LAW GROUP is a law firm dedicated to the rights of medical marijuana patients, collectives and growers and has built a reputation for high-powered, aggressive legal representation of the medical marijuana industry in Southern California. Call 949-375-4734 for a confidential consultation to discuss your rights.