Marijuana Blog

Medical marijuana activists in Los Angeles turned in about 50,000 voter signatures to the city clerk Wednesday, hoping to force a ballot referendum to repeal a recently passed ban on medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles. The ban was approved by the L.A. City Council last month.

Now the ordinance must be temporarily suspended, according to election officials in the city clerk's office. The signatures will then be verified against voter registration information. If they are found to be valid, the ban would be further suspended until voters get a chance to decide whether to keep it in place.

As an alternative to a total ban – which now looks very unlikely to stand - Councilman Paul Koretz is pushing for a new law that would allow 100 or so of the city's oldest and most established dispensaries to remain in business.

"The city needs a small number of well-regulated and patient-centered dispensaries," he said Tuesday. Without it, he said, "the city will be stuck with no rules and no protections again."

Leaving 100 dispensaries open is certainly better than closing them, but in the end, how many dispensaries are open should be primarily left to the market. The City Council needs to adopt a set of regulations, then let the market do the rest.

In fact, isn’t that one of the jobs of the city council? It’s certainly not their job to shut down 1,000 businesses and kill thousands of private sector jobs. Would you vote for a person for city council if they promised to destroy a few thousand jobs? Of course not. The voters of Los Angeles need to overhaul their City Council completely; these people are not fighting for you.

Source: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com

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