Pot Shops In Los Angeles Should Be Shut Down, Says City Attorney's Office

Story comes courtesy of The City Maven.

By Alice M. Walton

Shops that sell medical marijuana would be banned under a proposal from the City Attorney’s Office, although patients and caregivers could continue to cultivate their own marijuana, the Public Safety Committee was told today.

Calling it a “gentle ban,” representatives with the City Attorney’s Office asked that their proposal be forwarded to the Planning Commission for consideration at its Jan. 26 meeting in Van Nuys. The matter could be heard by the Los Angeles City Council by the end of the month.

The latest effort to regulate pot shops came last year following a court decision that found a Long Beach ordinance was unenforceable because it used a lottery system to determine which dispensaries could remain open. The Los Angeles ordinance was used a model for that law.

“It is simply a matter of time … before we have a ruling against the city of Los Angeles’ ordinance on the same grounds as were determined in (that lawsuit),” the City Attorney’s Office’s Jane Usher told members of the Public Safety Committee.

“Your ordinance is not implementable … you must repeal the current ordinance,” Usher said.

Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar, who authored the motion to ban dispensaries, testified that medical marijuana degrades the quality of life in neighborhoods.

“If we move forward as we are now, we’ll be back into the pre-2007 era where we have no ordinance to enforce and we’ll see these dispensaries pop up all over the city once again,” Huizar said.

There are 60 lawsuits involving 200 litigants, including dispensary owners and customers, pending against the city.