Hundreds of Los Angeles Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Face Closure Under New Rules Passed by Council,from Drug War Chronicle,

Hundreds of Los Angeles Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Face Closure Under New Rules Passed by Council,from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #618, 1/29/10

from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #618, 1/29/10,Hundreds of Los Angeles Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Face Closure Under New Rules Passed by Council

The Los Angeles City Council voted 9-3 Tuesday to approve a medical marijuana dispensary ordinance that, if enforced, will shut down more than 80% of the city's estimated nearly one thousand dispensaries. The ordinance also bars dispensaries from operating within a thousand feet of schools, parks, day care centers, religious institutions, drug treatment centers, or other dispensaries.

There were only four dispensaries in the city when the city council first addressed the issue in 2005, and 187 when the council imposed a moratorium on new ones in 2007. But hundreds of dispensaries opened via bureaucratic legerdemain during the moratorium, and more have opened since the moratorium was thrown out by a judge last fall.

The ordinance allows for only 70 dispensaries to operate in the city, but grandfathers in 137 dispensaries that were licensed before the council imposed the moratorium and are still in business. The number of allowed dispensaries could shrink even further if suitable locations that do not violate the 1,000-foot rule cannot be found.

The Council rejected another proposal that would allow for a 500-foot proximity restriction, and instead chose the 1,000-foot restriction, without analysis from the Planning Department showing the impact of such a decision. Some Council members objected to these restrictions, indicating that the current ordinance would effectively close all of the dispensaries in their districts. Advocates estimate that dispensaries will be unable to locate in virtually any of the commercial zones in the city and instead will be relegated to remote industrial zones, making it unnecessarily onerous for many patients.

The ordinance, which emerged after 2 ½ years of deliberations by the council, will be one of the toughest in the state. In addition to radically reducing the number of dispensaries and strictly limiting where they can operate, the measure imposes restrictions on hours of operation and signage, bans on-site consumption, and imposes recordkeeping requirements on operators.

"These are out of control," said Councilman Ed Reyes, chairman of the planning and land-use management committee, which oversaw the writing of the ordinance. "Our city has more of these than Starbucks," Reyes added, resorting to an increasingly popular if misleading trope.

But, reflecting the competing pressures the council was under from medical marijuana patients, advocates and dispensary operators on one hand, and law enforcement and angry neighborhood associations on the other, Reyes spoke sympathetically about patients just moments later. "I've seen enough people come into my committee, and you can see they are hurting," he said. "So this is very difficult."

Council President Eric Garcetti conceded that the ordinance will probably be revisited. "It's going to be a living ordinance," he said. "I think there is much good in it. I think nobody will know how some of these things play out until we have them in practice, and we made a commitment to make sure that we continue to improve the ordinance."

It will need to be revisited, said medical marijuana advocates. "I wouldn't be surprised to see this ordinance revised down the line," said Dale Gieringer, director of California NORML.

For Americans for Safe Access (ASA), passage of the ordinance signified a glass both half empty and half full. "On the one hand, it's a pretty significant milestone that the city of Los Angeles, the second largest in the country, has passed an ordinance regulating medical marijuana sales," said ASA spokesman Kris Hermes.