Tell City Council quit hatin’!!
Los Angeles Patients Put Halt To Medical Dispensary Bans
Thursday was supposed to mark the end of medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles, after the city council approved a ban on them this summer. But patients and advocates have managed to halt the ban, and some dispensary operators are suing the city.
For years, Los Angeles has been a mecca for medical marijuana dispensaries. Anyone with a doctor’s recommendation can stop in at chic storefronts offering cannabis-laced desserts, or at the more underground clinics, labeled only with a green cross. Hundreds, maybe a thousand of these pot shops popped up around L.A.
City officials tried to get a handle on the proliferation, with endless meetings, community hearings, police raids and lawsuits. Finally, the council decided “enough is enough,” says City Councilman Jose Huizar, who wrote a bill outlawing all dispensaries. The council overwhelmingly passed the ban in July.
“It was getting way out of control,” Huizar says. “A thousand dispensaries? Some neighborhoods have two per block, and young people have access. They go around the corner, they smoke it. Crime increases around these dispensaries, the traffic, the robberies.”
Huizar’s bill didn’t outlaw medical marijuana, but it did call for a so-called “gentle ban,” which would only allow three or fewer patients or their caregivers to grow their own.
The man makes a good point. People need their “medicine”, you wouldn’t ask them to make homemade Tylenol, why the sticky-icky?
The battle is won, but the war is far from over.
Image via TokeOfTheTown
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