LA City Council votes unanimously to ban MMJ dispensaries

I thought LA was like 14 million people..... I think there's probably a lot more than 800 pharmacies.

And so what if there is organized crime in it? The only way to air them out is daylight the shit out of everything, so there's no crime to it. At least I wouldn't worry about getting ripped off, beaten, or shot when in a dispensary..... Gotta be careful on the way to your car in some places though, I'm sure..... BECAUSE OF PROHIBITION.

 

bullshit
I'm in O.C. and I go to a few that have a $10 gram cap regardless of quantity or quality. They are doing just fine business wise. When you think about it a grow operation may have an initial high start-up cost, but once up and running the overhead to maintain is nothing compared to the potential $$$ it could generate.

Whoever told you all that has their head you know where.

 

So local government officials vote unanimously in favor of a bill that strengthens organized crime. Makes you wonder how much those government officials stand to make from the organized criminals.

 

Sapphire:

Who. The. Hell. Cares?

It's there either way, I don't care how many drug stores there are, it does not hurt me. I don't care how many rite-aid stores there are (legalized opiates, tranquilizers, and amphetamines), and I don't care how many pot stores there are. I don't care how many liquor stores there are, or how many "hummer" dealerships (like really expensive, legalized non-perscription viagra) there are.

The ONE kind of drug dealer that bothers me is the gang banger who might choose me for his "blood in" or whatever, or rip me off if I bought from him, or assault me, or any of the other things that are well known to happen with LA dealers.

As for the rest, I just don't care, and neither should you, and neither should the city council. No more people will smoke weed because it's at a dispensary, but a lot more people will smoke weed SAFELY because it's at a dispensary. More dispensaries is more safe weed, out of a total amount of weed that isn't going to change much.

 

Literally most people who are not in the 20 something year old weed bubble. Christ this isn't Memphis, Tennessee, this is LA, a city of 3.7 million people that is one of the most liberal cities in the nation, with one of the most liberal city governments in the nation. This is a city that not too long ago eagerly welcomed with open arms de facto legalized marijuana, and yet here we are today. When you have a significant part of even the pro legalization crowd warning that there are too many dispensaries and it's beginning to piss off a lot of people, it just may be, that there are too many dispensaries and its pissing off a lot of people. Part of politics, and living in a society is realizing where the current societal acceptance borderline is in regards to something, and stoners living in the idealistic marijuana bubble blew past that probably by about 300 or 400 dispensaries where a city council, angering enough people in the process that a city council that was one of the most pro-marijuana in the nation, and even has two members with medical marijuana cards, voted unanimously to close all but 170 of the oldest shops in the city.

Stoners need to get out of the weed bubble and into the eyes of the other 89% of the nation.

 

I don't care what the "rest" of the people think.

To me, drug prohibition sounds like any other persecution of minority groups. China locks up falun-gong practitioners, the US locks up pot smokers, I see no difference (we don't harvest organs from them while they're alive, though.... there is a difference in treatment once locked up. Here you're just sentenced to prison violence and AIDS....)

I don't care if the majority does not like pot, pot does not hurt them and therefore, action taken against pot is persecution.

I just don't buy the whole "not a full half supports it" argument. A full half of america didn't think that black people should count as people, for a very long time (and maybe today, behind closed doors). But that didn't make persecution okay.

 

I understand completely what Sapphire is saying and tend to agree.
And if there aren't enough dispensaries in L.A. hop on the freeway. It's not as if there are no other dispensaries around for 100's of miles.
Better yet, just use one that has delivery service.

 

Annnnd, there might be your problem. We're not talking civil rights here, we're talking about city zoning regulations

This is beyond a false analogy. If the argument was over the drug war in general, then it may be one in the fact the drug war is extremely racist, especially in regards to marijuana in how the law is actually applied(i.e. arrests), then yes, it'd be true. But marijuana legalization/decriminalization is not the issue at hand. Entire races of people are not being denied their rights, even medical marijuana patients, and for that matter stoners in general are not being denied their rights. Around 140 or so(I forget the actual number) of the oldest dispensaries will stay open, the rest will unfortunately have to close. This isn't a case of civil rights, this is a case of zoning and community relations, and the latter part the marijuana community has failed miserably on in regards to dispensaries.(Though at least in terms of decriminalization or legalization national polling has shown we're at least doing good on that). Someone brought up the alcohol example before, and you best believe if the same number of liquor stores existed per alcohol drinker in LA as there are marijuana dispensaries(given there are around 380 liquor stores for a population where near 90% drink in a given year, vs almost 800 dispensaries for around 10% of the population, we're talking a hypothetical number that'd be in the thousands) you damn well best believe there'd be a public outcry to close a bunch of them.

When you're dealing with touchy zoning issues, in this case the distribution of a drug(even if it's a relatively safe drug), community relations are everything, and the fact is the dispensary community failed miserably at it. A large segment of the population, including the pot smoking population has been saying for a long time there's too many dispensaries and it was making people feel uncomfortable, and lo and behold, there were and it bit us in the ass.

 

So, how did the dispensary folks fail? Were they in charge of dispensory zoning and permits? Did they have enforcment powers? Who'regulating the stores? It would seem like there would be strict zoning and permit process for dispensories. It looks like the councel let the problem get out of hand and then say "see we told you so." Like engineered zoning issues and public outcry by not managing. Not doing their job. I'm not from LA just responding to what I' reading here. Forgive my ignorance.
LA shoud use the model for zoning, control, and enforcement as liquer stores.
On another note. Theres going to be a lot of growers with a lot of product on their hands if dispensories are closed down.

 

Yeah.

I, personally, would think that it would make sense to limit it by pharmacy number and distribution. Remember that this is medical, not like liquor.

Anyway, as far as my analogies to other repressed groups and all, seems like pot jim crow through zoning, sapphire.

 

They failed by not heeding warnings from almost everyone that there was far too many dispensaries and it was pissing people off. One needs to start asking themselves if they want to fulfill their dream of owning a store that sells weed or realizing they're hurting the legalization movement. Also even people who owned stores, a lot of the more seedy ones did have the problem of basically being drug bodegas, people would just be standing out in front of the places all day smoking weed on the sidewalk and the owners did nothing to make them go away. Marijuana shops area already basically zoned like liquor stores, there are restrictions on where they can be placed in proximity to certain locations. LA is a city of almost 4 million people though, its not like the higher parts of city government actually pay attention to specific stores being opened, it falls on the community to regulate, and if there actually is a community to protest, sometimes the noise reaches a crescendo that it finally attracts the city government as a whole.

And there's not going to be any surplus of marijuana from growers, it's just all going to go to the 150 or so shops that were allowed to stay open.

 

Like any business, a lot of people obviously just want money, as fast as they can get it. Pot's a good way to do this, obviously. They don't care about the other guys, as long as they get in the "game" as long as they can before it ends.

You can't blame other responsible owners for this.

If the city council can't come up with good rules and make sure that zoning enforcers do their job, I don't think that's the pot-shops fault.

 

Thanks for the responses.

Thats true. Zone the dispensaries like pharmacies. Maybe even zone them like the pain med clinics in FLorida where a doctor owns it or is in control. I dont know? Just hate to see a good thing ruined by greed and recklessness by a few shortsighted people. Its hard to believe the dispensary board and city councel didnt see this coming

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Ok. I was thinking they were shutting all the dispenseries down.

 

The medical benefits of pot are well researched and documented - too bad - this is from a non user but a supporter of medical use.....and other use as I do not believe pot is harmful.....why not ban alcohol....seems it causes more problems.

 

14-0 for criminals.