L.A. Targets Cannabis Clubs
LOS ANGELES — Daniel Halbert moved here from Phoenix this year to invest his life savings in what he hoped was a golden opportunity: the medical-marijuana business.
But on Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council told him to shut down his dispensary, part of a broad crackdown against a growing and unregulated marijuana industry. More than 600 dispensaries have taken advantage of a loophole in city regulations to open shop here in the past two years.
The unchecked growth has alarmed some city leaders.
The Rainforest Collective, a small Los Angeles shop, dispenses medical marijuana but it’s facing possible closure from the city council. Sabrina Shankman reports.
“They were like a rash,” said City Councilman Ed Reyes, who is leading the effort to shut down many of the dispensaries. He said a colleague told him that at one dispensary near a high school, the student crowds outside made the pot store look “like an ice cream shop from the 1950s.”
The planning committee has begun hearings to close the loophole used by dispensaries to set up shop with scarcely any paperwork or permits.
