CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / LOS ANGELES

Members of the Los Angeles City Council’s planning committee delayed a decision on a new medical marijuana ordinance that would have created regulated collectives operating in city limits. The draft ordinance would have required each member of a medical marijuana collective to register under penalty of perjury with the city clerk’s office, and required each collective to install an alarm system and a television surveillance system, and to store dried marijuana in a locked vault or safe. The draft also would have explicitly barred the sale of marijuana, marijuana-enhanced or edible products by collectives.

Councilman Dennis Zine said he was concerned the ordinance would essentially shut down many of the city’s storefront medical marijuana dispensaries.

The city attorney’s office contends that many of the nearly 400 medical marijuana clubs and dispensaries are operating illegally.

About a dozen medical marijuana advocates, patients and collective owners criticized the proposed ordinance at the planning committee meeting Thursday and urged council members to delay a decision, noting they got the draft just hours before the meeting. A chief complaint was that the city attorney’s office did not include any suggestions put forward by medical marijuana patients and activists who participated in a working group for more than a year.

Councilman Ed Reyes, the chairman of the committee, has asked advocates and officials from the city attorney’s office, as well as police officials, to meet with him in a week to hammer out a revised ordinance.

-- Maeve Reston