LA City Council rejects 28 new dispensaries

(LA Times Blog) The Los Angeles City Council has denied applications from 28 medical marijuana dispensaries that wanted permission to operate despite a moratorium, clearing the way for the city to shut down any that have opened.

Since the council started to consider applications last month, it has denied every one, ruling against 43, including the 28 on Tuesday.

The council is struggling to assert control over the sale of medical marijuana in the city after its moratorium on new dispensaries proved toothless. Hundreds have opened despite the 2007 ban.

The city has stopped accepting applications for exemptions, but 883 were filed before the council closed the loophole. Until it adopts a permanent ordinance to control dispensaries, a task that has confounded the council for years, it intends to plow through the applications.

I am a supporter of dispensary access to medical marijuana (as long as the right to grow your own is maintained) even despite the same-as-street-dealer prices, because I understand that the reason the legit dispensary market must be so expensive is because of the illegitimate black market.  A dispensary can’t sell a legit $50 ounce only to have someone turn it into a black market $300 ounce, and they have to pay the growers’ inflated wholesale price lest the grower just sell it on the black market.  I get that.

The problem is that the gold mine of profitability that this black market pricing scheme entails attracts all manner of “entrepreneurs” from all over the country looking to cash in.  While most dispensaries are well run, clean, have the patients’ best interests at heart, are run by patients and caregivers, and some even offer other services that truly reveal their effort to engage in holistic caregiving, a few of these dispensaries don’t make much effort to distinguish themselves from being just a pot dealer with a dingy, hole-in-the-wall storefront.

I worry about the image of the California dispensaries and how it plays on legalization politics across the country and I don’t want to see the bad apples spoil the bunch.  Richard Lee’s Oaksterdam, the Farmacy, and other well-run, professional dispensaries make for fantastic public relations, but when the media can point to LA County and say, “there are more dispensaries than McDonald’s”, no matter how well-run they are, the shock factor makes legislators want to tighten new medical marijuana laws to the point where nobody can grow at home and dispensaries are a tightly-run limited state non-profit monopoly (MN, NH, NY, NJ, and AZ, for examples).

I hope Los Angeles does come up with reasonable zoning and business standards, and I would hope they would consult with people like Richard, Debbie Goldsberry, and others with experience in the matter