Court backs Calif. marijuana dispensaries

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 25 (UPI) -- A California judicial panel sided with medical marijuana growers, ruling pot collectives can provide the drug to members, even if the members didn't grow it.

The San Diego district attorney and California Attorney General Kamala Harris argued the provision in the state's medicinal marijuana law permits non-profit collectives, but they were intended to be small groups of people who grew the plants together, not a massive enterprise with thousands of patients serving as a mass dispensary, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday.

But a three-judge appellate panel in San Diego said the state's law protects non-profit pot collectives regardless of size.

Prosecutors were said to be eyeing Harborside Health Center, an Oakland non-profit marijuana collective with 108,000 patients, making it the largest medicinal marijuana provider in the country.