SB 1182: Protecting California Patients & Caregivers

Americans for Safe Access (ASA), the nation’s leading medical cannabis patients’ advocacy organization, supports SB 1182. Download our one-page fact sheet on the bill here.

This bill clarifies that medical cannabis cooperatives, collectives, and other entities that maintain storefront facilities to provide medicine (“dispensaries”) or deliver medicine may receive reimbursement for actual expenses and reasonable compensation for services provided to members. This clarity is important to establish a uniform statewide policy and avoid unnecessary arrests or prosecution of legal patients and their primary caregivers acting in accordance with state law.

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Most of California’s legal medical cannabis patients rely on cooperatives or collectives to acquire the doctor-recommended medicine they need to treat the symptoms of cancer, HIV/AIDS, Multiple Sclerosis, chronic pain, and other serious conditions. These patient associations are legal under state law, and the California Attorney General acknowledges that a "a properly organized and operated collective of cooperative that dispenses medical marijuana through a storefront may be lawful under California law" (Guidelines for the Security and Non-diversion of Marijuana Grown for Medical Use, CA Attorney General Jerry Brown, August 2008).

SB 1182 amends Section 11362.765 of the Medical Marijuana Program Act (SB 420) to include cooperatives, collectives, and other entities in the list of those people and associations exempt from penalties for sales and transportation of medical cannabis. This clarification recognizes the actual way that community-based access models like patients’ cooperatives and collectives provide medicine and allocate the costs of its cultivation among members. This straightforward amendment will provide certainty on the scope of the law to law enforcement, local lawmakers, legal patients, and primary caregivers.