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The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously this past July to shut down all medical marijuana dispensaries starting on September 6th. But now, an alliance of 300 dispensary owners called the Patient Care Alliance of Los Angeles or PCA-LA has filed a lawsuit challenging the city’s decision. The group is calling for an injunction to stop the ban claiming that the city will be impeding upon people’s First Amendment Right to free association by not allowing them to enter dispensaries. PCA-LA is also claiming that California’s 1996 passage of The Compassionate Use Act legally protects users of medical marijuana.

In order to appease medical marijuana users the City is allowing groups of no more than three people to grow the plant on private property. The city of Los Angeles is home to the largest number of dispensaries in the United States and critics point to the ease with which anyone can obtain a prescription. In fact, an NBC News undercover reporter was able to quickly obtain an illegal prescription by merely walking into a clinic and paying $65, without having an actual exam by a doctor.

In anticipation of the opposition to the ban, the city attorney’s office has sent letters to landlords where shops are located saying that they will fine them $2,500 per day if the shops remain open past the September 6th deadline. Marijuana is still outlawed at the Federal level and just yesterday the LA City Council sought help from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency or DEA to shut down dispensaries in the area. The US Justice Department has already filed lawsuits and sent warning letters to landlords who house marijuana shops in Orange County.

Meanwhile, activists have been gathering names to get a referendum placed before voters in March to overturn the ban, and Congresswoman Barbara Lee has introduced the States’ Medical Marijuana Property Rights Protection Act to make it illegal for the US Government to seize the assets of marijuana sellers.

GUEST: Sarah Lovering, Development Officer for the Marijuana Policy Project

Visit www.mpp.org for more information.