Mayor: Medical Marijuana Should Be Sold at Pharmacies

Monrovia Mayor Mary Ann Lutz joined the U.S. Conference of Mayors this week in calling for the federal government to reclassify medical marijuana so it can be sold in pharmacies across the U.S.

Lutz spent last week in Florida at the conference, which invites more than a thousand mayors from around the nation to convene and develop policy recommendations for legislators.

The mayors voted to send a resolution to congress and the President suggesting that medical marijuana be reclassified as a Schedule 2 drug under the Controlled Substances Act so that it is sold in pharmacies instead of dispensaries, Lutz said during her report at Tuesday's City Council meeting.

"This request moves all medical cannabis to Schedule 2 and what that means is that Schedule 2 drugs for medicinal purposes are all sold through pharmacies," Lutz said. "And so it was a recommendation of all the mayors across this country that we have a uniform policy that cannabis for medical purposes (is) sold at pharmacies."

Though the resolutions are non-binding, Lutz said the U.S. Conference of Mayors' positions are taken very seriously at the federal level.

"The U.S. Conference of Mayors has a very strong voice when it comes to federal legislation and the federal government," she said.

Monrovia does not allow medical marijuana dispensaries to operate anywhere in the city, but Lutz said she believes the City Council would support the sale of the drug through pharmacies because it would be more tightly regulated.

"It would be sold in pharmacies and I believe that we would have no problem with that as a municipality any more than we have with codeine or oxycontin or any of those other drugs sold under that category," Lutz said in an interview. "Pharmacies—that’s their job, to sell these controlled substances that are used for medicinal purposes."

A federal reclassification of medical marijuana would resolve a current conflict between California law, which allows medical marijuana to be sold through dispensaries, and federal law, which bans the sale of the drug altogether.