The medicinal marijuana flow is coming to an end in the palm-shaded “vapor room” of the Pure Life Alternative Wellness Center, begins this in-depth article from the Sacramento Bee.
Los Angeles’ restrictive new ordinance to stem the spread of medical marijuana dispensaries in the city will ban on-site pot consumption. It may force the closure of as many as 800 outlets, writes veteran Bee reporter Peter Hecht.
Over the past three years, this sprawling metropolis has fostered the wildest of markets for legal sales of marijuana for medical use. City leaders are trying now to rein it in.
Last month, the City Council passed an ordinance that caps the number of marijuana dispensaries at 70 while exempting another 100 pot clubs that were in business as of 2007. Dispensary owners have responded with threats of lawsuits and a possible November ballot fight to overturn the rules.
Los Angeles’ battle to govern its medical marijuana industry offers cautionary lessons for other California cities grappling, in widely conflicting ways, with burgeoning pot sales and piqued legal arguments over the hazy rules of the trade.
Even some medical marijuana advocates say Los Angeles lost control of its neighborhoods when dispensaries started flowering in the city in 2006. A feeble moratorium, passed in 2007 to stop new pot clubs from coming in, failed to slow the spread.
The moratorium eventually was thrown out in court, and the estimated number of dispensaries reached 1,000.
“This was the biggest city in the world” to allow dispensaries “and the path of least resistance,” said Don Duncan, state director of Americans for Safe Access, a group that promotes medical pot use. “It was the easiest place to come to do this.”
Under the city ordinance, hundreds of dispensaries that opened after 2007 are due to be closed by April when the law takes full effect. Scores more will have to move away from schools, neighborhoods and alleys.
The city also is making a determined stand to interpret vague state laws that allow medical pot to be distributed through patient collectives that are supposed to operate as nonprofits.
Los Angeles police will audit dispensaries under the ordinance to ensure that “contributions” or “reimbursements” pot clubs get from users don’t constitute profit-seeking sales.
“If they’re engaging in sales of marijuana, what they’re doing is illegal,” said Assistant City Attorney Asha Greenberg.
“The pendulum,” said Duncan, “is now swinging toward restriction.”
At the Pure Life Center in West Los Angeles, amid comfy settees and candles adorned with pot leaves, Yamileth Bolanos operated her “Volcano Vaporizer” for one of the last times. It blew a hot gust through a strainer of marijuana, filling a plastic bag with vapor.
She administered the drug to Carlos Kruschewsky, 46, so the quadriplegic could inhale and ease shoulder spasms without lighting up.
“It’s life-changing,” Kruschewsky said in a soft voice as Bolanos gave him water to soothe his vocal cords. “Just now my muscles feel better.”
Bolanos, a cancer and liver transplant survivor, opened the dispensary on bustling La Cienega Boulevard in 2007. Under the new law, she’ll need to move because it sits within 1,000 feet of a school.
The law also bans people from ingesting medical pot at any dispensary.
“This room is not a party room,” Bolanos said. “This is for patients who need to medicate. This is a place for safe use. And it is going to end.”
Los Angeles City Council member Dennis Zine is unhappy for a different reason.
The ex-cop and former vice president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League said he wanted to “do something appropriate” and “compassionate” to accommodate emerging dispensaries.
But he said Los Angeles became overwhelmed with pot clubs, aided by cut-rate doctors offering medical cannabis recommendations for as low as $35. He is angry over the many dispensaries he says cater to recreational use by “people just looking to get high” rather than the medical needs of AIDS and cancer patients.
“There’s a tremendous amount of abuse,” Zine said. “We’re not going to legalize marijuana under the guise of medical marijuana.”
Kruschewsky sees both sides of L.A.’s pot dilemma.
Paralyzed 21 years ago in a skateboarding accident, he moves his wheelchair with a lever at his chin. He works a computer mouse by tilting his neck to reflect a laser light off a metal dot on his forehead.
He says pot gives him muscle flexibility. And he is upset Bolanos’ neighborhood dispensary will have to relocate. But Kruschewsky doesn’t mind that other dispensaries may close.
“I’m not upset some of them are closing if they don’t care for or do anything for patients like me, if they’re just there to provide pot,” he said.
In the months leading to passage of the dispensary ordinance, City Attorney Carmen Trutanich depicted many pot clubs as illegal profiteers motivated by a thriving marijuana market.
He argues that dispensaries can’t legally sell marijuana, an assertion being tested in the city’s Eagle Rock neighborhood. On Jan. 29, a judge granted an injunction banning direct marijuana sales at an establishment there called Hemp Factory V.
The L.A. ordinance prohibits dispensaries from selling pot but says they can cultivate and distribute the drug in tightly run patient collectives that accept “reasonable compensation” for expenses. It authorizes police to investigate if worker salaries are excessive. But it sets no standards.
“You’ve got police, frequently antagonistic to medical marijuana dispensaries, looking at the books,” complained Joe Elford, chief legal counsel for Americans for Safe Access. “It’s problematic, and vague as to what is ‘reasonable.’ ”
Elford argues that pot clubs can pay salaries to operators and employees and cover all expenses as long as there is no money – or profit – left over.
Whether lured by cash or compassion, dispensaries pierce the L.A. landscape in abundance.
On Melrose Avenue, the shimmering marijuana leaf on one dispensary tower illuminates the night, a glowing symbol of the excess.
Elsewhere on the renowned boulevard, among actors halls and ethnic districts from Peruvian to Thai to Slavic, is a medical cannabis clinic called Doc 420. Nearby is a potpourri of dispensaries: Exclusive Meds L.A., Melrose Herbal Pharmacy, Buds on Melrose.
“I don’t like the fact that there are 20 (pot) collectives in my community,” said Barry Kramer, who has operated the California Patient Alliance on a stretch of Melrose in the Beverly Grove neighborhood since 2007.
“Not only do we work in the community, we live in it. This wasn’t the intent.”
Now Kramer has to move because his dispensary borders an alley. The alley restriction stands to shut down virtually all marijuana outlets on Melrose and in any business district close to neighborhoods.
“The patients will have to go to places where not even the cops like to go,” said Bolanos. “It’s like we’re a disease.”
The Greater Los Angeles Collective Alliance, representing dispensaries that opened in 2007 or earlier, is pressuring the City Council to save existing “good neighbor” pot clubs with no legal violations or community opposition.
Another group, the Los Angeles Collective Association, is mulling a lawsuit and November ballot measure that would allow hundreds of dispensaries that opened after 2007 to stay in business.
“We’re defeating their ordinance,” said the association president, Dan Lutz, who opened his Westside Green Oasis dispensary in May. “This is an ordinance to restrict patient access. It’s completely counter to what L.A. is all about.”
Dispensary operator Humberto Martinez also is facing closure.
Martinez admits he was seeking a livelihood when he opened California Herbal Providers – or CHP – in the San Fernando Valley after a motorcycle accident left him in a wheelchair.
A former mechanic, Martinez says he uses pot for back problems and invested “well over $100,000″ with friends and family last year to jump-start a new career he believed could help people feel better.
He hoped the nonprofit could pay him up to $5,000 a month. But CHP struggles in L.A.’s saturated market, and Martinez says he earns less than half that.
Still, he won’t close willingly.
“How is it going to look if they carry me out?” he said. “Because I don’t plan on going anywhere – until they literally come to shut us down.”
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