(Federal) Court upholds city's right to ban pot dispensaries

[alp227]

A city's ban on marijuana dispensaries doesn't violate federal disability law even though it may interfere with medical care for the disabled, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said it sympathized with a group of severely ill individuals who sought to preserve their "basic human dignity" by using pot to relieve their pain. But the court said the federal government's ban on marijuana contains no exemption for the disabled.

In fact, the court said in a 2-1 ruling, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the 1990 law that prohibits discrimination against the disabled, does not consider a user of illegal drugs to be disabled.

The case involves the Orange County communities of Irvine, which outlawed marijuana shops with a 2005 ordinance, and Lake Forest, which went to court to shut down its dispensaries in 2009. The California Supreme Court has agreed, in a separate case, to decide whether the state's medical marijuana laws allow cities and counties to ban dispensaries within their borders.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/21/BALH1OL93C.DTL

[bemildred]

1. Did the court really say this:

In fact, the court said in a 2-1 ruling, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the 1990 law that prohibits discrimination against the disabled, does not consider a user of illegal drugs to be disabled.

That seems a gross misunderstanding of the issue.