Gary Bay knew it was coming.
He had already stopped growing and cultivating pot at Suite 215, his medical marijuana collective in Van Nuys, ahead of a city ordinance that aims to shut down 439 dispensaries by June 7.
But when the letter ordering the closure from the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office finally came last week, he couldn't help but try to make a stand.
He has already torn down his growing room and only has enough product to sell to patients for another week - but he is also seeking legal advice from an attorney on ways he can fight to keep the collective open.
"Everything is being torn down for us to literally quit and get out and hand over the space to the landlord," said Bay, 30, of Northridge. "It's hard because now I need to figure out what to do and if I can't find work, where does that leave me?"
Bay is among dozens of dispensary owners across the city who are seeking legal help to keep their dispensaries open despite being threatened with six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Collectives could face a $2,500 fine for each day they stay open after June 7.
The letters were sent to property owners and dispensaries as a result of a city ordinance approved by the City Council earlier this year that sharply restricts the locations where clinics can open. It also seeks to close the facilities that opened after Nov. 13, 2007 when the city imposed a temporary moratorium on new clinics.
The ordinance
"We hope that because we have provided them so much notice, that they will voluntarily close," said Asha Greenberg, the assistant city attorney spearheading City Attorney Carmen Trutanich's efforts to crack down on illegal dispensaries. "And (then) we won't have to bring any legal action in the first place."
However, the city will likely face battles in court as some collectives, which have valid business permits but failed to register before the moratorium, try to get an injunction to block the ordinance.
A group of 21 collectives that filed two lawsuits against the city on April 20 - the traditional counterculture day to celebrate pot - had grown to 44 dispensaries by last week.
One lawsuit alleges discrimination by the city against businesses that did not register by 2007, said David R. Welch, one of the attorneys representing the group.
"They're trying to make a distinction in the ordinance between people that registered by Nov. 17 and those that opened afterwards that didn't register," Welch said. "Our basic principle is you can't do that because it's unconstitutional because there's no distinction."
The second suit seeks compensation for the businesses because the city allowed them to open in the first place, Welch said.
"The city issued licenses, permits, required people to do building and renovating, allowed them to operate, allowed them to pay taxes," Welch said. "Now because the political winds have changed, they're trying to get rid of them."
Trutanich has contended that, based on his reading of the medical marijuana law Proposition 215, most dispensaries operate illegally because they offer the drug for sale, instead of operating as nonprofit collectives with members who grow and cultivate marijuana for their own use.
Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant sided with the city last month in its suit against a Venice dispensary, saying that Organica Inc. could not operate as a retail store and that members must perform physical labor necessary to harvest marijuana for the collective's benefit.
The lawsuit arose from complaints against the dispensary that workers allegedly passed out fliers to students at a nearby high school.
City officials estimate that about 600 dispensaries opened up in recent years under a loophole granting "hardship exemptions" in the city's temporary moratorium on clinics. Some medical marijuana activists estimate that about 1,400 are operating in the city.
Shutting them down would create a two-fold problem, Bay said: closing businesses at a time when the economy is struggling and the city needs tax revenue; and forcing patients to obtain their drugs illegally because the remaining dispensaries wouldn't be able to handle demand.
"That's another 2,000 people out of a job and you're going to need (a dispensary) five times bigger than Wal-Mart," Bay said. "This law literally puts everything back on the street into criminal hands. You're going to have to literally go to the corner again and talk to (a drug dealer)."
Scot Mendelson, owner of Mother Nature's Remedy, a Van Nuys dispensary and training facility for rehabilitating injuries, also dislikes the city's crackdown, but sees at least one silver lining.
While he will have to shut down three of his four dispensaries, the remaining one will have less competition for patients, he said.
He was one of the first among the 186 dispensaries that registered with the city prior to the moratorium. He has since seen his number of customers dwindle as hundreds of other collectives opened up across the city.
Mendelson himself opened three other dispensaries in Van Nuys, Mission Hills and Sherman Oaks, taking advantage of the loophole in the moratorium, and poured more than $500,000 into the locations.
Those three dispensaries, named Mendica Caregiver, are now being shut down.
"I'm in support of (the ordinance) in that there are too many out there," Mendelson said. "But I'm not in support of it in that I dumped a half-million dollars into building it into what it needed to be, and leases, and now I just need to walk away."
Robert Greco, Mendelson's cousin who works at Mendica, estimates that the Van Nuys location serves about 3,000 patients, many of whom live within walking distance.
"We have a lot of people who come in from car accidents or have glaucoma or are actually blind," Greco said. "They're not going to get the medicine that they need."
For Mendelson, a professional weightlifter before being injured in a car accident, that's the toughest part.
"I have a lot of people that are counting on us that we can't help," Mendelson said. "They're basically putting them out in the desert."
