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 could stop in at chic storefronts
offering cannabis-laced desserts or at the more underground clinics,
labeled only with a green cross. Hundreds, maybe 1,000 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 allow only three or fewer patients or their
caregivers to grow their own.
At one pot
clinic in L.A.’s Franklin Heights neighborhood, Egyptian meditation
music mingles with the scents of indica, sativa and hybrid marijuana
strains. Sitting in the front office is Marc O’Hara, the executive
director of Patient Care Alliance Los Angeles. He scoffs at the idea
that a gentle ban would provide access to medical marijuana.
"It’s inconceivable to think that three
homebound patients suffering from spasticity, cancer, autism could
somehow pull together the wherewithal to produce medicine with the
potency and the medicinal effect of what’s grown by the best cultivators
on the planet," O’Hara says.
His group is
suing the city over its handling of medical marijuana clinics. His
colleague Tiffany Wright, who says she’s a cannabis patient, says the
city’s ban would drive legitimate users underground.
"I
feel like we’re almost being forced back into the dark ages," she says.
"Nobody that I know who’s a card-carrying patient wants to get their
medicine from some suspect in a dark alley, that could potentially be
contaminated with mold and pesticides, with no knowledge of who grew it
or where it’s been grown."
Facing an outright
ban on medical marijuana shops, activists, dispensary operators and the
union representing pot shop workers started a campaign, collecting tens
of thousands of signatures calling for a ballot measure repealing the
ban.
Activist Don Duncan, who heads the
California chapter of Americans for Safe Access, says they had no choice
because the city’s policies have never been clear. Until now, he says,
police have raided clinics at random and the city council has floundered
with various policies.
"I look back and shake my head and think, ‘What in the world has been going on in this city since 2005?’ " Duncan says.
"We’re
not saying no regulation, just a free for all
