District Attorney Meredith Lintott says the decision will make a “tremendous difference” in law enforcement’s ability to crack down on commercial grows.  From the Ukiah Daily Journal:

“It’s finally providing us with the tools we need to enforce the medical marijuana laws fairly, equitably, and without the kind of vagueness which has allowed things – in our county in particular, of course – to expand into an area where the county has been harmed. I don’t think our medical marijuana patients have been harmed, but the residents have been harmed. Now we can say we support, we back the use (of medical marijuana) the way the law intends it to be, but we will not allow you to trounce upon the quality of the life of the other residents of our county.”

She blamed judges for what she perceives as the confusion about the law.

“I think because people themselves took it to such extremes and had highly paid, well trained, persuasive lawyers and courts accepted the arguments,” Lintott said. “Once the courts started accepting the arguments and expanding the law to anyone who was providing marijuana, then the DAs, the prosecutors, and the people growing start buying into the interpretation.” “Hopefully (local judges will) read (the ruling) and say Hey, this is the law,'” Nishiyama agreed. “It’s like I’ve argued … if you want to grow your six plants at home and smoke it all up, I don’t care, but when you’re providing for every Tom and Dick and Harry that has a marijuana recommendation, that’s when it becomes a problem for us.”

Meanwhile, it looks like the California Police Officers Association want law enforcement to interpret the ruling as license to shut down the cooperatives.  They issued a “brief” which includes:

“As a result of the Court’s clear, distinct, articulation of who or what is a primary caregiver,’ the question of whether a marijuana dispensary falls within the definition is resolved — it does not! As is set forth in the law, a cooperative or collective can be formed to provide the needed marijuana for the members of that group. The Attorney General, in his recent guidelines, sets forth the legal basis for determining whether the dispensers of medical marijuana meet the definitions of a cooperative or collective – if they do not, they are not protected under the (Compassionate Use Act) and are operating illegally. It seems to be incumbent upon units of government, such as cities, to insure that businesses which want to distribute marijuana for medical use meet these legal requirements before issuing licenses and authorization to operate in their jurisdictions. Storefront dispensaries, which do nothing more than dispense marijuana, ostensibly for medical use, are illegal under both state and federal law and should not be permitted to operate in California.

As some may recall, law enforcement agencies have resisted Prop 215 from the beginning, refusing to honor judge orders to turn medical marijuana back over to patients on the basis that they would be violating federal law.  Finally, one judge in Mendocino told one agency to turn it over to him so he could give it back to the patient.  That action was probably one of Lintott’s issues.