Pot Shops Unbanned
By Hillel Aron
Potheads rejoice. Marijuana dispensaries will keep on trucking.
Remember how the city was gonna ban medical marijuana dispensaries on September 6? Well, that’s a thing of the past. Medical marijuana activists have gathered, so they say, over 50,000 signatures to overturn the proposed ban.
“Very soon, the city will be faced with having to rescind its ordinance or putting the decision before Los Angeles voters,” says Don Duncan, California Director with Americans for Safe Access, in a press release. “Because of the ban’s questionable future, the city ought to reconsider its tough stance on enforcing the ban.”
But the really wacky thing is that because the signatures are in and being verified by the City Clerk, the September 6 ban won’t even go into effect, according to City Attorney spokesman Frank Matelijan.
“The act of a single filing of a sufficient number of referendum signatures with the City Clerk (on the appropriate form and prior to the filing deadline of September 5, 2012) will suspend the new medical marijuana ordinance from taking effect,” Matelijan emails.
So the new ordinance banning the shops is nullified. Of course, there’s still no ordinance regulating them, and there’s nothing to stop various LAPD divisions from shutting them down, as they’ve done in the Northeast Valley, where not a single pot shop remains.
In other words, it’s like the last few months never happened.
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