Pinch
Well-Known Member
LA, CA - Since roughly one year ago West Hollywood has seen eight medical cannabis clubs open inside the city's 1.9 square miles. One has moved to Los Angeles, but retains its West Hollywood business license. LAPD and the Feds shuttered another dispensary. We have today six dispensaries for medical marijuana operating in the Creative City.
The Farmacy at Orange Grove and SMB, one of the more pleasant places patients can obtain their medicine.
The suddenness of the proliferation of cannabis dispensaries took an already medical marijuana battle-weary city council by surprise. West Hollywood continues to fight the Justice Department over property forfeiture when the city-sponsored Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center (LACRC) was raided in 2001. No attention was paid to regulating these businesses in the aftermath of that raid.
Because of that inattention, neighbors of these new, highly trafficked medical marijuana dispensaries have good reason to complain about the unintended consequences of making West Hollywood a "safe haven" for medical marijuana without first providing guidance to medicinal marijuana distributors and patients alike. Given the advent of something new under the sun on their streets, citizens have real reason to speak up in concern.
Having to confront carloads of churlish youngish adults smoking marijuana in front of one's yard, or having one's children exposed to the behavior, is disconcerting enough. Seeing armed guards appear on the very sidewalks we use rather than on the large private parking lots of malls, and in this stridently anti-gun city, alarms us.
Hearing about the armed robberies that have taken place over the fast fortnight at two medical marijuana clubs, despite one dispensary's armed guard's presence, causes worry to those of us who wish to see our community made safer — not the opposite.
On Monday afternoon, May 23, at Plummer Park, a group of medical marijuana dispensaries and neighborhood watch leaders, city staff and the interested public met to discuss a draft emergency ordinance laying out basic operational regulations for the dispensaries. The draft will be kneaded and reshaped slightly to reflect the dialogue that afternoon before going to the city council for public hearing and vote on June 6, 2005.
Notable among the 15 points offered by staff was a mandated security patrol to operate in a one-block radius of the club, to be provided by the dispensary. WeHoNews.com applauds the idea, but feels that doubling that radius to two blocks is entirely appropriate, especially in this city where finding nearby parking can sometimes be difficult. Besides, people seeking to abuse their priviledges do not usually do so around the corner, but a bit farther away.
Another point, calling for "adequate security and lighting on-site to ensure the safety of persons..." seems to WeHoNews.com to be too vague. A standard for security monitoring and security guards, beyond registering them with the Department of Consumer Affairs, is necessary.
Patients using these clubs are often unable to deal well with high stress situations (one patient WeHoNews.com spoke to uses the drug to combat post-traumatic stress syndrome developed in the first Iraq War), and seeing to the patients and residents' safety is West Hollywood's most important concern.
Requiring that dispensaries follow the law of Proposition 215 and AB 420 (written by West Hollywood State Assemblyman Paul Koretz) is an excellent step, one that will hopefully help to avoid recurrences of what allegedly took place inside the Yellow House.
Questions about how to balance the vast amounts of money these dispensaries generate — the overwhelming majority of it coming from outside city limits — with their supposed non-profit status, as well as what to do with all this money if these clubs truly operate as non-profits, are daunting ones, for which much discussion will be required before nailing down answers.
For their part, the dispensaries promise to do their share for the community. WeHoNews.com believes, after extensive discussions with most and at least some experience with the rest, that at least four of the six earnestly seek to provide quality medicine for patients in need in friendly, therapeutic environments. Standouts in that regard are the Farmacy at Orange Grove and SMB and LAPCG at Formosa and SMB, while the others on the west side of town strive equally hard to project a professional and warm "space." WeHoNews.com means no endorsement by this - it is merely observation.
Both the operators of these named dispensaries, however, have told WeHoNews.com that they and their employees know that they could go to jail for doing their work. Still, they both attempt, despite the dangers inherent in doing so, to create a welcoming, cheerful and therapeutic space for patients to safely get needed medicine.
West Hollywood has always been a place where people could come to feel safe being whoever they are and doing whatever they do, no matter how out of touch with the mainstream it might be at the time.
And yet again, as has happened so often before, the city has been blessed with an influx of outsiders here on an urgent mission. Not gays seeking refuge from LAPD, not refusedniks escaping oppression, not seniors seeking a village in old age, no: this time it is healers and therapists who are pioneering a medicinal modality still unfamiliar to us and weighed down by a century of misunderstanding — medicinal marijuana.
If history holds true, and the creative synergy of safety and acceptance works hand in hand with this new paradigm, WeHoNews.com is proud to predict that this city might one day possess not only the best medical marijuana dispensaries in the state, but soon, at least after all the dust settles, we may boast of having the best-regulated dispensaries of any municipality in the state.
And if history coninues to hold true, the neighbors will adjust, as will the businesses and their patrons, and again we will all settle into our usual welcoming and accepting selves, quietly moving along our path — that of making the Creative City the safest little city for anyone from anywhere to live.
Source: WeHo News
Copyright: 2005 WeHo News
Contact: webmaster@wehonews.com
Website: https://wehonews.blogspot.com/2005/05/52505-editorial-medical-marijuana-is.html
The Farmacy at Orange Grove and SMB, one of the more pleasant places patients can obtain their medicine.
The suddenness of the proliferation of cannabis dispensaries took an already medical marijuana battle-weary city council by surprise. West Hollywood continues to fight the Justice Department over property forfeiture when the city-sponsored Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center (LACRC) was raided in 2001. No attention was paid to regulating these businesses in the aftermath of that raid.
Because of that inattention, neighbors of these new, highly trafficked medical marijuana dispensaries have good reason to complain about the unintended consequences of making West Hollywood a "safe haven" for medical marijuana without first providing guidance to medicinal marijuana distributors and patients alike. Given the advent of something new under the sun on their streets, citizens have real reason to speak up in concern.
Having to confront carloads of churlish youngish adults smoking marijuana in front of one's yard, or having one's children exposed to the behavior, is disconcerting enough. Seeing armed guards appear on the very sidewalks we use rather than on the large private parking lots of malls, and in this stridently anti-gun city, alarms us.
Hearing about the armed robberies that have taken place over the fast fortnight at two medical marijuana clubs, despite one dispensary's armed guard's presence, causes worry to those of us who wish to see our community made safer — not the opposite.
On Monday afternoon, May 23, at Plummer Park, a group of medical marijuana dispensaries and neighborhood watch leaders, city staff and the interested public met to discuss a draft emergency ordinance laying out basic operational regulations for the dispensaries. The draft will be kneaded and reshaped slightly to reflect the dialogue that afternoon before going to the city council for public hearing and vote on June 6, 2005.
Notable among the 15 points offered by staff was a mandated security patrol to operate in a one-block radius of the club, to be provided by the dispensary. WeHoNews.com applauds the idea, but feels that doubling that radius to two blocks is entirely appropriate, especially in this city where finding nearby parking can sometimes be difficult. Besides, people seeking to abuse their priviledges do not usually do so around the corner, but a bit farther away.
Another point, calling for "adequate security and lighting on-site to ensure the safety of persons..." seems to WeHoNews.com to be too vague. A standard for security monitoring and security guards, beyond registering them with the Department of Consumer Affairs, is necessary.
Patients using these clubs are often unable to deal well with high stress situations (one patient WeHoNews.com spoke to uses the drug to combat post-traumatic stress syndrome developed in the first Iraq War), and seeing to the patients and residents' safety is West Hollywood's most important concern.
Requiring that dispensaries follow the law of Proposition 215 and AB 420 (written by West Hollywood State Assemblyman Paul Koretz) is an excellent step, one that will hopefully help to avoid recurrences of what allegedly took place inside the Yellow House.
Questions about how to balance the vast amounts of money these dispensaries generate — the overwhelming majority of it coming from outside city limits — with their supposed non-profit status, as well as what to do with all this money if these clubs truly operate as non-profits, are daunting ones, for which much discussion will be required before nailing down answers.
For their part, the dispensaries promise to do their share for the community. WeHoNews.com believes, after extensive discussions with most and at least some experience with the rest, that at least four of the six earnestly seek to provide quality medicine for patients in need in friendly, therapeutic environments. Standouts in that regard are the Farmacy at Orange Grove and SMB and LAPCG at Formosa and SMB, while the others on the west side of town strive equally hard to project a professional and warm "space." WeHoNews.com means no endorsement by this - it is merely observation.
Both the operators of these named dispensaries, however, have told WeHoNews.com that they and their employees know that they could go to jail for doing their work. Still, they both attempt, despite the dangers inherent in doing so, to create a welcoming, cheerful and therapeutic space for patients to safely get needed medicine.
West Hollywood has always been a place where people could come to feel safe being whoever they are and doing whatever they do, no matter how out of touch with the mainstream it might be at the time.
And yet again, as has happened so often before, the city has been blessed with an influx of outsiders here on an urgent mission. Not gays seeking refuge from LAPD, not refusedniks escaping oppression, not seniors seeking a village in old age, no: this time it is healers and therapists who are pioneering a medicinal modality still unfamiliar to us and weighed down by a century of misunderstanding — medicinal marijuana.
If history holds true, and the creative synergy of safety and acceptance works hand in hand with this new paradigm, WeHoNews.com is proud to predict that this city might one day possess not only the best medical marijuana dispensaries in the state, but soon, at least after all the dust settles, we may boast of having the best-regulated dispensaries of any municipality in the state.
And if history coninues to hold true, the neighbors will adjust, as will the businesses and their patrons, and again we will all settle into our usual welcoming and accepting selves, quietly moving along our path — that of making the Creative City the safest little city for anyone from anywhere to live.
Source: WeHo News
Copyright: 2005 WeHo News
Contact: webmaster@wehonews.com
Website: https://wehonews.blogspot.com/2005/05/52505-editorial-medical-marijuana-is.html
