How AB 266 Failed the Patient

by Juan Valdez

On October 9, 2015, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law AB 266, AB 243 and SB 643. Collectively, this devil-is-in-the-details regulatory nightmare is known as the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act (MMRSA). As the story goes, this poorly written law contained in it an especially poorly (or deviously) written line which said that any municipalities that did not come up with their own regulation of commercial medical marijuana activity would default to the State’s more reasonable guidelines which sent the anti-marijuana crowd into a full on panic. The League of California Cities and other anti-marijuana organizations went on a misinformation spreading crusade and duped the city council members of many a city into passing bans on medical marijuana activities.

The CA NORML website is tracking bans, partial bans and regulation in more than 300 municipalities at www.canorml.org/bansbycounty.xlsx. As of March 1, 2016, there are 240 cities in California that have passed medical marijuana bans. The strictest of bans apply to the cultivation, manufacturing, distribution and delivery of medical marijuana. In Orange County, the cities of Brea, Costa Mesa, Dana Point, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove Huntington Beach, Irvine, Laguna Woods, Los Alamitos, Newport Beach, Orange, San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, Santa Ana (allows for 20 dispensaries, all other activity banned), Seal Beach, Tustin, Villa Park, Yorba Linda and Buena Park have some sort of ban in place and bans have been introduced in La Habra, La Habra Heights and La Palma. In San Diego County, the City of San Diego and the unincorporated areas appear as an island in a sea of bans.

These bans effectively eliminate safe access to medical cannabis for those that need it most. For example, a person living in the city of Lemon Grove in San Diego county can not get medical cannabis delivered to them. Sure, some people can discreetly grow their own medicine and others can drive to one of the six legal dispensaries in the city of San Diego. However, a terminal cancer patient, an immune compromised patient, or a severely arthritic patient is unable to grow for themselves or travel by public transportation and then walk to a shady industrial area to get their medicine. The end result of the bans is legitimate patients having to turn to an unregulated black market which, ironically, is what the MMRSA set out to eliminate.

Now more than ever is the time to take a stand by contacting your local city council members and share your story of how medical marijuana has improved the quality of your life and how important safe access is to the chronically and seriously ill.