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Dispensary Progress in LA Despite DEA Raids City Council Starts Regulatory Process; Calls on DEA to Cease and Desist For two years, ASA organizers have been working with city officials in Los Angeles to ensure safe access to medical marijuana, educating them on the needs of patients and the benefits of a sound regulatory approach. The efforts of ASA and other patient advocates has resulted in significant progress in LA, so much so that the DEA has made it a target. On the same day that the Los Angeles City Council was preparing to take an important step toward regulating the operation of medical cannabis dispensing cooperatives, federal agents staged another set of coordinated paramilitary raids designed to intimidate local officials and patients. The raids on ten dispensaries came within weeks of the DEA sending over a hundred threatening letters to landlords of LA dispensaries, telling them the dispensaries are operating illegally under federal law and that the landlords could lose their buildings to federal asset forfeiture. These attacks on patient access were similar to the dozen simultaneous raids conducted in January. Like then, ASA activists sprang into immediate action, organizing protestors at dispensaries while raids were still going on and alerting the local media, which turned out in force. Within two hours of the raids starting, over 200 patients and advocates had gathered at one Hollywood dispensary, blockading the entrances and preventing DEA agents from leaving until they released the employees being detained. That same day, the Los Angeles City Council - under the leadership of Councilmember Dennis Zine, a former LA police officer with whom ASA has worked closely - voted overwhelmingly to establish the groundwork for a regulatory process for medical cannabis dispensaries that ASA has been advocating for two years. The council then all signed a letter to the DEA and then unanimously approved a motion endorsing the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment, which would prevent future DEA attacks on state medical marijuana programs. Councilmember Zine also joined ASA before the hearing in a press conference calling on the DEA to abandon its attacks on medical cannabis dispensaries and allow LA to move forward without further federal interference. ASA's communication efforts helped ensure that LA media covered the raids and City Council actions from the patients' perspective - not the DEA's. And the story was picked up by the major networks and carried by hundreds of television and radio stations as well as newspapers across the country.