SACRAMENTO, Calif., – Assembly Bill 2385, by Assembly Member Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer Sr., has successfully passed out of both the California State Senate and State Assembly and is on its way to the Governor's desk. If signed into law, the bill would approve the state licensure of various medical cannabis businesses in the City of Los Angeles.
The City of Los Angeles failed multiple times to regulate medical cannabis, but finally in 2013 it passed Measure D-- a ballot measure that allowed 135 dispensaries, all of which had been in business since 2007, to remain open, while banning others. This measure, however, did not actually permit those 135 dispensaries to operate — which legal experts said, at the time, the city could not do because cannabis remains illegal under federal law. Measure D merely said the city would not prosecute those 135 dispensaries.