Zugsberger, 34, who had a Mendocino County physician’s recommendation for five pounds of pot, was considered a test case for how much marijuana a patient may possess for reasonable personal use.

Last month, the California Supreme Court threw out California limits on the amount of plants or dried marijuana medical users can have at any time.

The Supreme Court ruled that the Legislature improperly amended the Proposition 215 medical marijuana law without the consent of voters. Yet the decision still allowed authorities to arrest medical cannabis patients suspected of possessing pot for sale or exceeding state or local possession guidelines.

After intense deliberations that lasted twice as long as his trial, a jury acquitted Zugsberger of a felony count of possession for sale. But it convicted him of felony transportation as well as misdemeanor possession.

Zugsberger, who could receive four years in prison on the felony count, was immediately taken into custody in the courtroom.

Sacramento Superior Court Judge Roland Candee set his sentencing for April 8.

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After months of working and reworking the law, the City Council voted 5-4 to approve the new restrictions on top of other requirements, such as the registration of collectives and taking security measures. The vote was a first reading and the ordinance will return for a final vote likely next week.

Council members Robert Garcia, Tonia Reyes Uranga, Rae Gabelich and Val Lerch voted against the ordinance.

City Attorney Bob Shannon had presented the council with three different options on how to regulate the collectives in response to a presentation by the District Attorney’s Office and the Sheriff’s Department last month.

Alternatives that weren’t approved by the council included restricting the number of collectives allowed in each council district and requiring cultivation within the county instead of just Long Beach.

The DA had said that the ordinance wouldn’t comply with state law if it didn’t include local cultivation requirements and a rule that only collective members could grow marijuana, both of which were added to the law.

Lerch and Gabelich in particular disputed this legal interpretation, and Lerch chastised Shannon for trying to redo the legislation.

“I am not sure why we’re here with a whole new version of the medical marijuana ordinance,” Lerch said. “We have a version on the floor that was approved by the majority of the council.”

The council had approved the creation of an ordinance that didn’t restrict where marijuana could be grown in February one week before hearing the DA’s presentation and postponing another vote.

Shannon said the ordinance was “incomplete” as previously approved and that he wouldn’t draft the law if it didn’t pass muster.

Gabelich suggested requiring that marijuana be grown within the state, rather than the county or city.

“You start with the least restrictive, and you pull it in as necessary,” she said.

However, Councilwoman Suja Lowenthal and Mayor Bob Foster said that was backward.

“Start narrow, start within our own city. … And then enlarge it as the need arises,” Lowenthal said.

Foster said that it would be much harder to make the law more restrictive after collectives had already spent money establishing themselves.

The council also voted to extend the areas around schools in which collectives aren’t allowed to operate – the 1,500-foot buffer for high schools remained, while the 500-foot buffer for other schools was extended to 1,000 feet.

Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske had suggested the change, noting that Long Beach Unified School District had requested the 1,000-foot buffer to comply with its drug-free school zones.

Notably absent at the meeting was a long line of medical marijuana advocates speaking on the matter.

Foster didn’t allow public comment, as the meeting was a continuation from February and the public has made its opinions known at multiple meetings.

However, Rick Brizendine, an attorney representing Belmont Shore Natural Care medical marijuana collective, said after the vote that this was a violation of the Brown Act.

“The public has never had an opportunity to comment on the most recently raised issue of in-city cultivation,” Brizendine said. “It was brought up at the last meeting, but the public was not allowed to comment on that either.”

At that meeting, Foster only allowed comments about the motion to continue the matter to a later date.

Shannon said there was no Brown Act violation.

“The Brown Act only requires that you testify once with regard to a particular issue,” Shannon said. “Everybody has had repeated chances to testify.”

Brizendine said that because of this alleged violation and other aspects of the law, his client is “absolutely” considering taking legal action.

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State Senators Chris Romer, a Denver Democrat, and Nancy Spence, an Aurora Republican, wrote to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to demand that officials there not conduct any further raids while the state sorts out regulating this blossoming and troublesome industry.

The DEA raided the home of a Highlands Ranch man last month after he bragged on a local TV station that he had a few hundred pot plants he was growing for medical marijuana shops and expected to make hundreds of thousands of dollars doing it. That prompted the DEA to swoop in and arrest him, and then brag that the operation of the man and others like him are all illegal. All that after the Obama administration had announced that it would “look the other way” in states like Colorado that had legalized medical marijuana as officials tried to sort out regulations.

The local DEA agent who apparently led the raids, Jeffrey Sweetin, added insult to injury of state residents by telling reporters that he didn’t think marijuana had any medical uses anyway.

Romer and Spence are right in asking Attorney General Eric Holder to call off Sweetin.

Even more bothersome was that Sweetin ordered the raid of two businesses that said they were setting up as laboratories to test the potency and impurities in medical marijuana.

Romer and Spence are backing a measure that would require those growing medical marijuana to add their names to a state registry that would be kept secret from the public or federal officials. It’s a good idea, which Sweetin’s raids are undermining right now. These raids did nothing but further complicate and already unwieldy situation.

It’s not enough for Holder to just muzzle the DEA on this matter for the time being. Holder needs to step in and have the DEA drop these charges.

The president, Congress, the governor and the state Legislature all disagree with a handful of local DEA agents that this is a matter for the state to sort out. And those efforts are under way.

Holder must set the clock back on the DEA arrest and allow the state to do the work almost everyone wants it to.

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Inglewood Wellness Center is the original compassion club in Los Angeles County. Inglewood Wellness Center is committed to providing safe access. We strive to operate a dispensary that is a model of compassion and legal integrity. Inglewood Wellness Center operates in strict compliance with IAW PROP 215 and SB420 (California’s medical cannabis laws).