The strategies employed by medical-marijuana dispensaries to get along in Long Beach have ranged from ignoring the City’s rules to playing by them even when they were unenforceable. And who could forget taking the City to court, which is what led to the repealing of the City’s medpot ordinance in the first place?

But there’s a new kid on the medpot strategy block, as a coalition calling itself the Long Beach Citizens and Patients Rights PAC (LBCPRP) is attempting to take the matter directly to voters.

Last week the LBCPRP filed with the City its intent to circulate a petition asking voters a simple question: “Shall a ballot measure be submitted to the voters of the City of Long Beach at a special municipal election that will allow Medical Marijuana Collectives to operate in the City of Long Beach?”

Presuming the LBCPRP is passably well organized, collecting the required 33,500 signatures (i.e., 15% of registered Long Beach voters)[1] in the allotted six months should not be too difficult, considering that in 2010 a statewide proposition that would have legalized marijuana for recreational use was favored by 53% Long Beach voters.

And since an ever-increasing majority of Americans favor legalizing marijuana for medicinal use[2], if the LBCPRP measure gets on the ballot, it is almost sure to pass, since Long Beach swings more liberal on marijuana issues than the country—or even the state—as a whole.

Moreover, the LBCPRP plan would install a 4% tax on medpot dispensaries, money that would go directly to the City of Long Beach’s General Fund. The Long Beach Collective Association (LBCA), which supports the initiative, estimates that tax to generate approximately $1 million per year. Considering that in 2010 76% of Long Beach voters punch the “Yes” space on their ballots next to Measure B, which would have taxed sales on recreational marijuana had Proposition 19 passed, the proposed tax should help ensure that the initiative passes.

But even if it does pass, that may not be the whole ballgame. The LBCPRP initiative would—or replace, really—LBMC § 5.89 (the section of municipal code banning dispensaries) with an ordinance that is similar in many respects to LBMC § 5.87, the original medpot ordinance that the City repealed in the wake of the Pack decision.

For example, the new and improved 5.89 would require dispensaries to obtain a business license from the City, as well as requiring the City to affirmatively regulate the logistics of operating a dispensary—the sort of action most people believe the Pack decision disallowed on the basis that a city or state may not affirmative regulate an activity prohibited by federal law.

But Gautam Dutta, the election lawyer who authored the LBCPRP initiative, says the matter is far from clear.

“What everyone will agree on is that the law is up in the air right,” he says. “The law is going to be decided by the California Supreme Court, if not the U.S. Supreme Court. […] We don’t believe that the ordinance that we drafted is in conflict with the Pack decision. The whole area of law is in flux, and the courts will provide us with some guidance. But not immediately. […] We don’t think the City should have to wait for the courts on something that could benefit the tax coffers.”

Dutta says the very fact that the California Supreme Court granted review of the Pack decision is a good indication that it may be struck down. “When something is granted review [by the Court—something they hardly ever do—it gives everybody pause,” he says. “[…] It’s clearly a yellow light. “They only take cases that they want to take, and they always have a very good reason for taking them.”

Dutta says that Article 3 Section 3.5 of California Constitution makes it clear that, because no injunction was issued by the courts concerning LBMC § 5.87, the City was not required to abandon it in the face of the Pack decision—but that at the very least the City should have taken the most pragmatic approach to the Pack decision: extending the ban exemptions until the Supreme Court issues its ruling.

“From our legal standpoint the City could have continued the [medpot] program as is, but from a policymaking standpoint they should have continued the exemptions,” he says. “It would have been the easiest approach—and fairest approach—to put everything on hold until the State Supreme Court rules,” Dutta says. [City officials] have a duty to be responsible policymakers. And policy-making is the art of compromise.

But Dutta says that since the City chose not to compromise, the ballot box is one way to fix the City’s mistake.

“Californians have a scared right to vote on initiatives,” he says. “We’re hoping Long Beach residents will exercise that right to allow patients to safely and conveniently obtain the medicine entitled to them by state law.”