LA city council votes to close hundreds of pot shops
A countdown to the closure of hundreds of medical marijuana shops in Los Angeles is set to begin after a drawn-out legal battle led the city council to vote unanimously to shutdown the shops.
Four different strains to help ease pain, insomnia, and lack of hunger due to chemo therapy. photo/Coaster 420 via wikimedia commons
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will sign the ordinance giving pot shops 30 days to shut down operations. On Tuesday, the city council voted 14-0 to ban them.
As many as 900 dispensaries will be affected by the new ordinance, but it’s unclear what will happen if they disobey the order. Legal questions remain unanswered by the state’s highest court.
The city has fumbled with its medical marijuana laws for years, trying to provide safe and affordable access to the drug for legitimate patients while addressing worries by neighborhood groups that streets were being overrun by dispensaries and pot users.
“Relief is on the way,” said Councilman Jose Huizar, who introduced the so-called “gentle ban.”
Many cities have struggled with medical marijuana ordinances, but none has had a bigger problem than Los Angeles, where pot shops have proliferated. At one point, the city ordered closure of the shops – a process that failed amid lawsuits and conflicting rulings by appellate courts.
“This is an outrage that the city council would think a reasonable solution to the distribution of medical marijuana would be to simply outlaw it altogether,” said Don Duncan, California director of Americans for Safe Access, a medical-marijuana advocacy group, in a statement.
