WEST HOLLYWOOD TAKES SYMBOLIC STAND ON POT

by Eric Malnic, Times Staff Writer - California


West Hollywood has declared itself a sanctuary for medical users of marijuana.  Which changes nothing.

Laws still prohibit the medical use of cannabis in California.  The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, which serves West Hollywood, said Tuesday that it will continue to enforce those laws.

"Absolutely," said Deputy Scott Butler, a department spokesman.  On Monday night, the West Hollywood City Council unanimously passed a "symbolic resolution" proclaiming the unconventional town "a sanctuary for the cultivation, distribution and use of medicinal marijuana."

The council's action came six weeks after the federal Drug Enforcement Administration shut down the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center in the city. Federal agents raided the center on Santa Monica Boulevard on Oct.  25, uprooting 400 marijuana plants, seizing indoor growing lights and hauling off computers listing the names and medical histories of the center's 3,000 then-current and former patients.

The raid angered those who claim that their health depends on pot cigarettes and marijuana muffins.  And it outraged West Hollywood city officials, who had cultivated good relations with the center.
"We have no power to overturn the federal enforcement actions, but we are profoundly distressed by what the DEA did," said Councilman Jeffrey Prang, who wrote the resolution. "We were expressing our views about the misguided policies and actions of the federal government.  Obviously, what we did was more symbolic than real."

West Hollywood's nonprofit, member-supported cannabis cooperative was established in 1996, when voters approved California's Proposition 215, an initiative permitting small amounts of marijuana to be grown for medicinal purposes. But the state measure conflicted with federal drug laws.  Six months ago, in a case involving Northern California cannabis clubs, the U.S.  Supreme Court issued an 8-0 ruling largely invalidating the state initiative.