L.A. Bans Medical Pot Shops

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to ban pot shops citywide.  All 762 medical marijuana dispensaries that are registered with the city must shut down.

Pot shops that do not comply are threatened with legal hell in the City of Angels.

Medical marijuana activists who packed the council chambers in anticipation of the historic vote booed loudly when the axe fell.  Feeling scared, the city council called in LAPD officers to stop the dissent.

Under the L.A. pot shop ban, medical marijuana patients and their caregivers will be able to grow and share pot in small groups of three people or less.

"We have shut off almost every way that a normal person can get access to marijuana," declared Councilman Paul Koretz. "It will be a ban until otherwise noted."

People against the city council's action say banning dispensaries will cut off access to medicine and force elderly patients to purchase marijuana illegally on street corners and in dark alleys.

The citywide ban on marijuana stores ban will take effect in 45 days, pending the mayor's signature.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck have both come out in support of a total and complete ban on medical marijuana dispensaries, so the mayor is expected to sign the ban into law.

So far, 180 California cities and 20 California counties have banned retail medical marijuana shops.

However, the 2nd District Court of Appeal recently overturned Los Angeles County's ban on medical marijuana dispensaries.

When the California Legislature enacted the Medical Marijuana Program Act, it authorized places where medical marijuana could be distributed (and protected from municipal ordinances) including:

• Cooperatives
• Collectives
• Dispensaries
• Operators
• Establishments
• Providers

Critics point out that the storefront distribution of medical marijuana is legal under California state law, and that the L.A. City Council's cowering before neighborhood complaints to ban pot shops destroys hundreds of local businesses, kills thousands of jobs, and wreaks havoc on tens of thousands of medical marijuana patients.

"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 of Americans for Safe Access.

New cases will undoubtedly make their way to the California Supreme Court but, in the meantime, many are calling for the California Legislature to pass a new act that further clarifies California's state medical marijuana laws.

L.A. Bans Medical Pot Dispensaries

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