Some of Orange County's last-standing medical-marijuana dispensaries have until May 24 to shut down.
On May 17, following a similar action in Garden Grove that came in the wake of the recent California Supreme Court ruling that affirmed the right of cities to ban storefront cannabis purveyors, the city of Anaheim sent cease-and-desist letters to all 11 dispensaries still operating within its boundaries.
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According to the city's press release on the anti-pot campaign, Anaheim has banned dispensaries since 2007, but as many as 143 clubs nonetheless operated within city limits as late as 2011. As the Weekly has previously reported, that's the year the city invited the federal government to assist in its weed-eradication efforts, sending closure orders to dozens of clubs, as well as threatening to seize the buildings in which they operated, including one high-profile case that is still working its way through the courts.
“It is the City's position that medical-marijuana dispensaries violate City law and are illegal, and the recent Supreme Court opinion has vindicated the City's position,” the press release states. “Failure to close operations by May 24 at 1 p.m. will result in enforcement action against the MMD [medical-marijuana dispensary], which may include criminal charges being filed against any person found to be in operation of the MMD, fines in the amount of $1,000 for each day that the MMD continues to operate, the filing of a civil action, or any combination of the above.”
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Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).