Los Angeles council bans medical marijuana dispensaries

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian

Los Angeles council bans medical marijuana dispensaries
Shops to be closed down amid complaints that drug is being sold too freely but patients push for concessions
Rory Carroll in Los Angeles
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 July 2012 22.12 EDT

Los Angeles may soon be off the map as a pot-smoking mecca following a city council vote to ban storefront medical marijuana dispensaries.

The council has voted unanimously in favour of the crackdown after the mayor, the police chief, the city's attorney office and residents' groups called for restrictions.

LA's 762 registered dispensaries – some say there are actually more than 1,000 – will receive letters ordering them to close or face legal action, signalling the likely end of a freewheeling era that let pot shops sprout across the city.

The 14-0 vote prompted jeers and laments from pro-cannabis groups that gathered in city hall to protest what they called a callous and misguided prohibition. Police officers briefly intervened to quell them.


Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/25/los-angeles-bans-marijuana-dispensaries

[Stardust]

1. Well, that really sucks. nt

[alp227]

2. vote them all out!

[TeamPooka]

3. Prohibition is a failed public polcy...again

Legalizing cannabis converts a money pool controlled by cartels into jobs, taxes and a revenue stream that benefits all citizens.

[kestrel91316]

4. FUCKETY FUCK FUCK THIS!!!!!

I just got my MMJ card 3 months ago and the stuff is a freakin' miracle for my neck/back problem.

[limpyhobbler]

5. Fully legal marijuana is the way to go.

As long as we try to have it on strictly medical grounds, we will always have problems getting access, even for those with legit medical issues.

The argument for personal liberty is the strongest argument for marijuana. It is stronger than the medical argument.

imho could be wrong thanks.

[Ganja Ninja]

17. Yup just legalize it, tax it and sell it like liquor.

The problem isn't that it's too widely distributed. The problem is it's not common place, its a novelty. They also need to leave the laws in place until the novelty wears off and stop blaming the pot for the problems created by individuals that would be a problem regardless.

[truthisfreedom]

6. I see this as the first step to fully legal marijuana.

Infuriate the public enough to get them to take action.

[AndyTiedye]

9. They Just Say We're On Drugs and Ignore Us

[bluedigger]

7. Add another 4,000 unemployed to the rolls.

Just a guess on the numbers, but you get the point.

[jtuck004]

8. But the folks selling 100 round magazines for the AR-15, they are still around, yes?

Standing on that wall, keeping us safe, you are?

[calimary]

10. Fuck.

[Comrade Grumpy]

11. Good luck with that. Look for (more) years of court battles.

Or for the California Supreme Court to settle these issues once and for all.

[TeamPooka]

12. This doesn't get rid of pot in LA...

This just puts drug dealers back on the street and in the neighborhoods to sell pot again.
It allows them not to have to pay rent, taxes, salaries, utilities and insurance and make some sort of contribution to our community.
Now they will be a complete black market again.
That means even more profit.
This was a vote to support and fund drug cartels by the city council and mayor.

[limpyhobbler]

21. +1. This just encourages actual criminal behavior.

[DeSwiss]

13. TPTB will never allow cannabis to be made legal. Not on their watch. They can't afford to.

It's a familiar refrain: The Army and its surrogates provide protection for the drug trade, and the CIA manages the whole enterprise. The banks launder the drug money by the ton. Police departments become para-military units and the agents of the 1%ers helping them to suppress dissent. While for-profit security companies conduct our wars, and our tortures and renditions. And private corrections companies make billions from warehousing humans and in the creation of indentured servants and slaves. And the ruling/criminal classes just get filthier in their riches.

With freedom indebted and bankrupt, with liberty raped and beaten by thugs masquerading as our protectors before our very eyes almost daily, and a scorning system of ''justice'' which holds that a fictitious construct on paper is equal to flesh and bone. Humanity is daily mugged and beaten senseless. Our desires are programmed into us to tell us what we should want. What we must buy ''to keep the system running.'' Everything in the world, including ourselves, openly put up for sale or trade......

- That's why it'll never change. A corrupted system can't be fixed. Only replaced.




K&R

[Kolesar]

15. The beer and liquor manufacturers don't want the competition, either

People want to get high. It is not that complicated.

[KurtNYC]

14. allow cultivation for personal use

same as tobacco

[musiclawyer]

16. Which is the three legalization measures

This November are our best hope for ending the WOD

In thè meantime in CA you will start seeing civil disobedience Sick people buying in public etc

[K8-EEE]

18. My daughter is a medical marijuana patient here in LA

She takes a cannabis tincture under the tongue for panic attacks, anxiety and self-injurious behavior related to autism.

This has been a godsend for our family because unlike the prescription meds she experiences no side effects and it can be taken intermittently as needed rather than several times daily. The meds she was prescribed are hard core psych drugs (like Xanax) and highly addictive and toxic!!

I will not give her street drugs - if the dispensaries go away from Los Angeles I will have to drive to Orange County to get the tincture I guess.

Thanks City Council for making our lives a little harder. Don't you have any actual problems to address? I live in an area with several dispensaries and UNLIKE THE LIQUOR STORES there has been no negative behaviors, crime or anything else associated with them.

[zonkers]

19. Dispensaries created foot traffic in dying business zones. Nearby businesses hanging on

by a thread, definitely stayed afloat during this recession. Coffee bars, salons, etc. I am not even counting the taxes these places have generated for cities. Sure there are a few raunchy dispensaries but the good effects far outweighs the bad. The powers that be don't like the idea that these lucrative businesses popped up organically as opposed to being "given out" and controlled by them.

[electedface]

20. Tax Marijuana and Reduce the Federal Deficit

Estimates show that marijuana is America’s number one cash crop. However, marijuana remains untaxed. This is a new source of income for our nation, an income we desperately need.

Over 500 of the nation’s top economic professors have shared their opinion in supporting the removing the prohibition and imposing the taxation and regulation of marijuana as a way to slow the federal deficit.

Ending marijuana prohibition would save the US $7.7 BILLION annually. That is nearly as much as Congress’ proposed Budget Control Act. Think of the jobs it would create, the court time I would save and the jail space it would free up for actual criminals.

Sign into electedface and create a group, this will connect every member directly to their elected officials.

[mitchtv]

22. the only solution?

RECALL THEM ALL!

[coalition_unwilling]

23. Bill Rosendahl, my councilperson, just lost my vote for his

next move politically. He'd already lost my support when he didn't speak out against LAPD brutality against Occupy Los Angeles. But now I'm not even going to vote for him and may actually work for his opponent. He's really pissed me off.

[happyslug]

24. A little more details from the LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0725-pot-ban-20120725,0,3171935.story

The new ordinance will allow patients and their caregivers to grow and share marijuana in groups of three people or fewer. But activists complain that few patients have the time or skills for that, with one dispensary owner saying it costs at least $5,000 to grow the plant at home....

Council members said that in the meantime, something had to be done to reduce the number of dispensaries, which outnumber Starbucks coffee shops in Los Angeles two to one, according to Councilman Paul Krekorian.

Beck, who appeared before the council, said dispensaries can be hot spots for crime, citing burglaries, armed robberies and killings. In a letter to lawmakers, he said most pot shops are "for-profit businesses engaged in the sale of recreational marijuana to healthy young adults."

That seems to be the over riding problem, the dispensaries are NOT restricting themselves to the sale of marijuana for medicinal use, they want to sell it like Alcohol. Instead of being a Pharmacy they want to be a bar, which is more profitable. Sounds like the city fathers had enough and voted to ban them TILL A SOLUTION IS FOUND. Both Articles clearly point out they is support for medical dispensaries, the issue is how to make them more like pharmacies instead of bars. Older (pre-2007) dispensaries have more support from LA political establishment, but do to the fact most of them started out as a type of Pharmacy, and have tended to remain more Pharmacy like.

On the other hand the post 2007 dispensaries adopted a more bar like business policy i.e. sell what you can, leave it up to the customer if he or she needs it for "medical" reasons. This has lead to problems involving crime (As do problem bars). Problem Bars are regulated by the States, so if they get to out of hand can be closed down. These dispensaries are NOT under any type of regulation and it looks like have NOT been able to regulate themselves, thus the city has decided to ban them till it decides on a solution as how to make sure these dispensaries become more like a Pharmacy and less like a Bar.