The highly sensitive city attorney is dead set on harshing the mellow new marijuana farmers' market in Boyle Heights and the people (with prescriptions) who love it: he's seeking a restraining order ("for many reasons — from the violation of Prop D to the impact on the community to the failure to comply with city land use law") that would shut the operation down, says KPCC. Proposition D is the 2013 voter measure regulating pot shops in the city of LA. "[T]hey couldn't get a permit if they tried," says LA City attorney Mike Feuer about what he refers to as the "so-called farmers market" that first opened the long weekend of July 4. (As pointed out in the ReasonTV video below, the farmers' market, where patients buy direct from growers, is actually a purer reflection of California's medical marijuana law than dispensaries are.) Update 3:49 pm: A judge has issued a temporary restraining order against the farmers' market and declared it "illegal for card-carrying cannabis patients to meet directly with growers to purchase marijuana at the market," reports CBS LA.
The lawyer who represents the event's initial organizers, West Coast Collective, says in the LA Times that the LA Department of Building and Safety told the market's executive director that a permit was not necessary to operate the market.
The market, which was in operation as recently as this past weekend, is based in a warehouse behind the West Coast Collective's dispensary, which, they are careful to point out, is on a list on the city's attorney's website of approved dispensaries. Entrants had to show their medical marijuana cards to enter, and were given wristbands upon doing so. When the farmers' market opened, neither police nor the city spoke out against it, despite heavy publicity.
The first hearing for the injunction against the market will be held today, but, says the Collective's attorney, "Until the judge decides that this is an improper way of operating, my clients have no intent of ceasing" the pot market.
· LA seeks to shut down Boyle Heights marijuana farmers market [SCPR]
· L.A. city attorney seeks court order to halt cannabis farmers market [LAT]
Loading comments...